Mother Bear Led 3 Cubs to Attack the Eagle’s Nest to Steal Eggs in Alaska
This is the remarkable moment a brown bear attempts to raid an eagle’s nest before being set upon by a flock of enraged birds.
Photographer Jeff Schultz took the incredible pictures while paddling down a river with other guests at the Katmai Wilderness Lodge near Anchorage, Alaska.
In the photos a fully-grown brown bear can be seen tentatively approaching the eagle’s nest in search of food while her cubs watch on.
But the mother eagle is wise to the threat and tries to defend her young by flapping her wings and making noise to scare off the bear.
It keeps coming forward and the eagle throws itself at the huge animal before a second bird joins in the attack and a third.
Eventually a whole swarm of eagles attacks the bear, but Schultz said they had gone out of view before they could find out if the bear managed to swipe the eggs from under the mother eagle’s beak.
To be fair, it is unclear from the video whether the bear or her cubs were able to find anything to eat in the nest or not.
But the eagles are pretty agitated regardless, repeatedly swooping at the head and face of the mother grizzly.
The cubs, you will notice, eye the eagle with concern — the eagle might even be big enough, or the cubs small enough, to carry one away herself…
‘We were too low to know if the bear had actually eaten the eggs or chicks,’ Schultz told the Anchorage Daily News.
‘We debated it long and hard the rest of the day. How could she not eat them?
‘But the eagles came back right away after the bear left and stayed. The next day there was an eagle on the nest again, so we’re thinking the eggs or chicks survived.’
All in all it is one of the most compelling nature videos we’ve ever seen because, as the videographer writes,
“the picture every photographer wants to get in Alaska is a bear and an eagle…well, we managed to get an entire battle on camera between the two.”
Are you Team Bear or Team Eagle? See the whole riveting video below:
