Struggle for Territory

From Daniela Fricke

My highlight of 2024

On my morning walk with my dog at the beginning of November, I passed rowdy jays and magpies. Since it is in the hawks' territory, I thought they hated the hawk again, but then I looked anyway to see if I could see the hawk.

I looked up into the tree and immediately into the bright orange eyes of the eagle owl. Never in my wishes or imagination would I have thought I would ever meet an eagle owl here.

The bleating of the jays and magpies then attracted the attention of the carrion crows. Around 30 crows then arrived and hated the eagle owl. I felt quite sorry for the eagle owl, he just wanted to spend the day dozing somewhere in peace and now had 30 carrion crows on his cheek.

In the meantime, even the hawk came by to bleat. It was quite a spectacle all day. Simply an unforgettable experience.

It was also interesting to see that as soon as the eagle owl moved even slightly, all the crows flew up, about 100m away and then flew back to it. They had extreme respect for the eagle owl.

Since the entire area would be an ideal territory for the eagle owl, I can well imagine that it settled there, even though I haven't seen it again to this day. But it will certainly have learned to retreat to rest during the day in a better camouflaged way.

EOS R5, RF 200-800mm, 800mm, f/9, ISO 4,000, 1/500 sec., FH