Bald eagle and fox battle, midair, on San Juan Island | Update | Photos

By Hayley Day • May 26, 2018 10:57 am

Kevin Ebi, of Living Wilderness Nature Photography, snapped a high-flying food fight on Saturday, May 19 at American Camp on San Juan Island.

“It was one of the most incredible encounters I’ve had with wildlife,” he said.

In a series of photos, Ebi captured a bald eagle grab a fox kit’s freshly caught rabbit, but the young fox didn’t let go as easily as Ebi expected. According to his website, “the battle played out more than 20 feet in the air” for about 8 seconds, until the fox finally released his dinner.

In the end, the kit rebounded quickly.

“Don’t worry,” Ebi wrote in his blog. “The fox was fine. It shook off the encounter and resumed playing with its fellow kits.”

Ebi has been a nature photographer for about two decades and said he kept his distance when capturing the scene. He used a 600 mm lens and another piece of equipment that magnifies the image even further and still had to crop photos by about 20 percent for a clear image.

“There’s no way to deliver a consistently high-quality body of work without treating your subjects with complete respect,” he said.

The popular pic was featured in The Seattle Times, The Washington Post and New York Daily News, as well as British and Australian publications, according to Ebi. While the Linwood, Washington resident is no newcomer to having his photographs in the spotlight, he said this time is a bit different.

“I’ve had an image on a U.S. postage stamp, several National Geographic books, but I think this is the first image of mine where it feels like almost everyone on the planet has seen it,” he said.

View the entire encounter at http://livingwilderness.blogspot.com/2018/05/battle-in-sky-bald-eagle-and-fox.html.