Kathy Brown, Demise of a blue tongue (ANIMAL & NATURE 2022)

I often frequent the old quarry in Coffs Harbour called Corambira Point to observe and photograph the seabirds and whales. There is a family of white bellied sea eagles that have been breeding nearby for years and often they will fly over the point looking for prey. The first two images were captured a few weeks before the last two and you can see evidence of an earlier meal on the birds beak as it flies across the ocean and the last two images were caught unexpectedly as the eagle rounded the bend and straight into my viewfinder making it very difficult to capture as it was quite close and moving fast. I wondered what it had caught for its meal and when i downloaded the pictures i was fascinated to see the decapitated blue tongue lizard with its tail also missing. The Sea eagle did not stay around and flew straight towards the hills i guess to devour its catch.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.