Eel is apparently on the menu for bald eagles.
There’s not much that our nation’s bird won’t go after. The predatory birds are very opportunistic and will hunt anything that it feels as though it could haul off. That usually means that bald eagles prey on smaller mammals (like squirrels) and fish, but sometimes they stray away from their normal meal planning and go for something different.
What is something different? Well, we’ve seen bald eagles go for things as small as little yappy dogs and as big as a deer. Rarely ever do the eagle-eyed birds of prey have trouble hunting something down… it’s just picking that something up that can occasionally complicate things.
It’s believed that bald eagles can lift prey as heavy as three to four pounds with no problem at all. When their future meals get heavier than that, the iconic bird can run into issues. One thing that bald eagles can utilize to pick heavier things up is momentum. Swooping down out of the air at a high speed and lifting right back up into the sky sometimes allows for bald eagles to have more in tow.
However, they can’t always do that when they need to secure their catch – like the bald eagle in this video that decided to snatch up an eel for a meal (I promise I did not intend for that to rhyme). As you’ll see, the large bird overestimated its ability to get the creature out of the water once it used its razor-sharp talons to secure it.
But just like the country it represents would do, the bald eagle rolled up its figurative sleeves and went to work. It never gave up, and eventually synced up the flapping of its wings perfectly to overcome the slippery rocks by the water and get the eel out of the water and onto a surface fit for chowing down on the unique fish.
Just goes to show that sometimes you have to try, try, and then try again to get a job done:
