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and Photographs © 2006 by J R Compton. All Rights Reserved.
European Starlings Index
European Starlings fighting over food, not sex.
You can almost hear the bird on the right telling
off
the smaller, probably younger bird on the left.
Sweet little birdies getting into clawing each other.
Sitting on a park bench about thirty feet from these trash cans, I watched a Mockingbird land on the cans, sniff around a bit, drop down to the ground and begin eating some soft, orange, rotting fruit on the ground.
Within a minute, it was joined by three European Starlings that picked a fight, chased the mocker away. I'm sorry I missed that fight, but I had to sit there and be careful not to raise the camera too quickly as they jumped into the air to fight, and I wish I'd upped the "film speed," although the blurs enough are nice in these shots.
After a half dozen combative interchanges, I got my bird-fight shooting technique down well enough to catch these guys in the frame, somewhat in focus and stopping their raucous motion enough to see what was going on.
I didn't have time to study my results. I hardly expected the birds to stick around to pose. So I kept shooting and just hoped.