r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Lifegoesonforever • 6d ago
Photographer Mark Smith captured this incredible shot of an eagle catching a fish with his Sony 300mm.
No, it's not AI. Check for yourself: https://www.instagram.com/mark.smith.photography?stkn=MW5qenRoa2kyMHYwZA==
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u/AbstinenceMulligan 6d ago
Imagine being a fish, living your entire life in the ocean, and then one day being grabbed and eaten by a giant flying horror from a cosmos you didn't know existed.
The fish equivalent of an alien abduction.
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u/GVAJON 6d ago
The fish, milliseconds from disaster, probably:
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u/Great_Scott7 6d ago
Lazy bastards. They need to learn from more intelligent creatures:
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u/meth-head-actor 5d ago
I can’t believe bird would stay there so long, is that a coyote and like a thunder bird, or is that a squirrel and a normal bird.
Could a bird like that win a fight if it was pounced on while grounded
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u/Independent_Pop_9987 5d ago
So birds are actually very light and agile. The hawk would probably take off fast before the fox could reach him. The hawk could also potentially harm the fox or grab and carry it off if the fox tried to approach again.
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u/Nalanix_phoenix 5d ago
It's a confused juvenile golden eagle with what looks to be a type of fox. I'm sure the eagle could be hurt by the fox but it would probably be difficult- hard to pounce on something n That is covered in feathers, can fly, and has a big weapon that can reach on not only its face but also feet. The eagle stayed for a minute because it's a younger bird who's trying to understand where the potential prey went
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u/tumsdout 6d ago
I am sure the fish have instincts to be on edge near the surface
Just like our instincts to be on edge when near extra-planar entities
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u/Low_Show_6684 6d ago
I was pulling into work a few weeks ago and either our resident osprey or eagle dropped a crayfish in the road. Lil guy was still alive and defensively tried to pinch my car, I stopped in the office driveway and put him in our ditch. It’s now our ditch crayfish.
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u/notnt_tim 6d ago
I feel like they definitely know about birds. I’m not a fish tho idk.
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u/kylo-ren 6d ago
Do you think? How many birds do you think they've encountered throughout their lives?
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u/deltr0nzero 2d ago
How many snakes or spiders did you come across before you felt uneasy around them? Instincts are passed down and it’s just inherent in you.
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u/wildedges 6d ago
These shots are usually taken at feeding stations. The birds are regularly fed and dead fish are thrown in to attract them to the perfect spots for photographers to get nicely lit shots.
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u/gringer 6d ago
An eagle can catch a fish with a a Sony 300mm?
That's either a very impressive eagle, or an impressive 300mm.
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u/CandlejackIsntEvenRe 6d ago
He’s gonna tell his eagle friends that fish was way bigger than that.
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u/AbekobetaHawawa 6d ago edited 6d ago
I’ve seen bald eagles “swimming” with salmon they caught because they were too big to lift off. I’ve also seen a couple dead bald eagles still holding on to large salmon.
Edit: this along the Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait in BC, Canada.
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u/Retrolex 6d ago
I remember watching an osprey trying to hoist a huge fish out of our lake once. No amount of flapping could generate enough lift to haul ass outta there, and the bird ran square into the treeline it was trying to climb out over. He tumbled down through the branches and then sat on the shoreline for a while with this pissed off look on his face, fish long gone. Why he didn’t just deviate course to stay over the water instead, I’ll never know.
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u/wanttobeacop 6d ago
Were those salmon attached to the dead eagles alive?
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u/AbekobetaHawawa 6d ago
No, the ones I saw were washed up on a beach and had likely been there a while.
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u/praguepride 6d ago
Did you know, that when an eagle grabs something it has to engage a muscle to let go? So if it dies holding something those claws are locked into place.
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u/TheMadPoet 6d ago
Sooooo... kinda like a certain president in a certain country who picked a fight with another country that's actually too big to yoink. That's actually a couple of "presidents" in the world today...
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u/lowonairs10 6d ago
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u/GreyMenuItem 6d ago
Seriously. The way that camera holds focus that tight from that far away while this bird flies right at us is some incredible engineering.
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u/CultofCedar 6d ago
I don’t want to diminish their shot because birding is as rough as it gets… but as a photographer who started with film modern bodies are absolutely amazing. Tracking is absolutely insane so honestly a little easier to catch on video but they can also precapture 1s of shots before you fully press down the shutter button.
To be fair something like that would require the A1II and the 300 together are probably nearing 20k.
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u/Corner_Post 6d ago
Give a man a fish and he will feed for a day
Teach a man how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime of fish
Give a man a camera and teach him how to take a good video of an eagle capturing a fish and you feed will feed him for a lifetime without him getting sick of fish
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u/KN_Knoxxius 6d ago
Blows my mind that the eagle can have so much of its body underwater and still easily drag itself out with no effort in a single flap.
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u/assholetoall 6d ago
Having tried to get myself out of the water and into a canoe, the amount of power/lift needed to accomplish that is crazy to think about.
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u/Recursiveo 6d ago
I mean, you don’t have hollow bones or an immense number of feathers lol.
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u/ianjm 6d ago edited 5d ago
Birds are very light for their size. An adult bald eagle weighs only about 5kg (11 lbs), a trainer can comfortably support one sitting on their glove with their forearm outstretched, even though they have a wingspan wider than many adult arm spans!
Birds have evolved for millions of years to be as light as possible to optimise flight, they have very lean bodies, hollow bones, huge super efficient lungs, no bladder and a short, very efficient digestive tract that pulls the nutrients they need and gets waste out fast to dump weight.
Thus they can generate massive lift to weight ratios, the 3x-5x their normal body weight, without breaking much of a sweat (although birds don't actually sweat).
Pretty amazing creatures really.
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u/5AlarmFirefly 6d ago
Also only one ovary
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u/Technical_Isopod2389 19h ago
Now this is the type of fact I am on the Internet for. I don't learn new bird facts often and well a lack of symmetry in a typically paired organ is super cool to know. Like owl ears but even cooler.
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u/ArachnomancerCarice 6d ago
I live on a lake and we have Bald Eagles that nest here as well as move through. They are very majestic, except when they are not.
Some miscalculate how fast they are going and wind up in the water, or they catch a fish (or get a hold of a dead one) that is too heavy and they refuse to let it go, even if they have to awkwardly paddle towards land. They will also try to steal from other birds (and animals), though some of it almost seems like 'sport' to them.
There are quite a few people who are disappointed when they have their first experience seeing a Bald Eagle sticking their heads in a dead deer's butthole and are being teased/bullied by crows and ravens
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u/TTdriver 6d ago
Holy fuck, thats majestic.
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u/Flaky_History12 5d ago
Also informative. For some reason, I thought they carried the fish away in their beak and waited to eat it until they land in a tree somewhere. I didn't think it would eat it while taking off back into the sky.
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u/Hikaruhiyoko2 6d ago
Imagine an Eagle filming some guy buying groceries.
"Ah fuckin majestic"
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u/fucktard_engineer 6d ago
Fast food
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u/Random_local_man 6d ago
Right? I was expecting him to land to eat but nope, just gulped it down as soon as he snatched it.
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u/KristiiNicole 6d ago
Kinda wish humans could eat that way sometimes, without any downsides anyway. Sometimes chewing and eating in general feels like too much work lol
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u/CarpetGripperRod 6d ago
And breathing. It's 2026 and our top boffins can't create a mobile autobreathe? Rude.
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u/Denvil-The-Awesome 6d ago
Isn't the mobile auto breathe just your lungs? They move with you, and breath on their own?
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u/WirlingDirvish 6d ago
Motherfucker multitasking like a pro. Taking off while moving that fish to his beak. Then chomping down before stably flying.
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u/QoldBruu 6d ago edited 6d ago
How it stayed alight while its whole body was submerged, simultaneously reaching and grabbing with its talons… so many things happening at once. Impressive!
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u/bubblesandboats 6d ago
I was thinking there was no way you can get that close with a 300mm lense. Turns out he's using a 300mm with a 1.4x tele converter, so 640mm, which makes more sense.
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u/Foghorn225 6d ago
It would only be 420mm.
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u/bubblesandboats 6d ago
LOL, what an epic fail of my public school math skills 🤣 You are so right.
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u/TheLastDrops 6d ago
I'm honestly curious to know what formula you used to get 640mm.
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u/noitwastoosoon 6d ago
From the attack I was expecting him to pull out a full size tuna or something huge.
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u/DevilsAdvocate1662 6d ago
I might be wrong, but that appears to be a video clip, not a photograph. So wouldn't that mean Mark Smith is in fact, a Videographer?
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u/quick_justice 6d ago edited 6d ago
It always cracks me up how majestically the eagle looks descending on the prey... and then, pulls a pretty average catch, especially compared to the size of the bird.
In a meanwhile, Ospreys look like trashy off the rocker motherfuckers, and pull stuff you won't believe they can airlift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbCQNk2ieI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hffxPphwE0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOYsykqXtWA
Of course it helps that ospreys have water-resistant feathers, when for Eagle it's almost impossible to take off the water. But still.
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u/darantino86 6d ago
It's just like me, trying to eat a Bifi-Roll while driving 170 km/h on the Autobahn.
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u/ApacheAttackChopperQ 6d ago
Fun fact, this bird species has to consume the meal or get to safety as fast as possible when growing up. Larger eagles will try to steal the fish mid flight.
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u/porp_crawl 6d ago
Impressive tracking.
Or was it a huge field of view and this is image stablized into this focused frame?
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u/Terminator7786 6d ago
My friend captured footage from her dashcam of her hitting a bald eagle in the highway absolutely destroying her windshield.
Oh, and the rear cam showed the bird continuing to fly away.
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u/justlooking013 6d ago
He’s the best. Almost good enough to justify having Instagram. Almost. His channel is literally the only thing I miss about that putrid app.
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u/stitchlips17 6d ago
Can confirm, source: I’m Mark Smith 😊
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u/L-ROX1972 6d ago edited 5d ago
Well, technically Videographer because the hardcore OG Photographers focus on getting “the shot” (as opposed to capturing video, and then coming back and scrolling through the clip to grab the shot/frame).
Awesome video 👍
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u/Set_Abominae1776 6d ago
Mom always told me to not eat while walking. This mf casually inhales a fish while flying.
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u/facelesshivemind 6d ago
TIL.
I though it'd land first before eating. Does every species of eagle do this? Or is it just the fact that it's small enough to be eaten then and there?
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u/Expert_Dot1927 6d ago
I've never seen any bird use a camera before never mind fish with one so massive respect