A video showing a bald eagle and a red fox tussling over a striped bass carcass is making the rounds on social media after a Maryland man recorded the skirmish in his backyard and posted the footage on Instagram.
Casey Holland, a mortgage loan officer from Earlville, Maryland, woke up to a wild show on the morning of June 7. Just behind his kids’ swing set, a red fox and a bald eagle were squaring off for dibs on a pile of fish that Holland had caught and cleaned the night before. He grabbed his phone and started to record as the two predators circled each other in a tense backyard standoff.
“I was getting up and getting the day started when I caught movement through the window,” Hollands tells Outdoor Life. “I initially thought it was our dog running around, but then realized it was a fox. When I got a bit closer, I could see there was an eagle, too. They were circling each other, trying to get the fish. Neither of them wanted to back down. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”
While bald eagles are iconic for their patriotic symbolism, they are also highly opportunistic scavengers, quick to claim a free meal when they find one. They are also fish eaters. Red foxes, on the other hand, are omnivores known to test their luck against larger animals if they think it means a quick and easy meal. However, it’s rare to catch these two predators negotiating over dining rights at the same breakfast table.
“It’s not every day you see a red fox challenge a bird with a 7-foot wingspan,” Holland says. “I was rooting for the eagle to fight off the fox, because we have chickens.”
Holland, who lives within a couple of hundred yards of the Chesapeake Bay, often leaves leftover fish scraps near the woods by his house. His wife and two young kids enjoy seeing what comes out to clean them up — usually buzzards or the occasional fox. They’ve witnessed eagles before, too, but never one on the ground and never going head to head with a fox.
In Holland’s video, the fox stalks close, tail swishing, while the eagle flares its wings, trying to stay in between the canine and the scraps. The two pivot and circle-like boxers size each other up before going toe-to-toe. For over a minute, neither fully commits nor fully retreats.
By the time Holland rushed to wake his wife, the fox and eagle had each backed off. At least temporarily. About 20 minutes later, the fox returned, snatched one of the fish carcasses, and disappeared into the woods. Holland later spotted the eagle perched in a nearby tree, enjoying a different chunk of the spoils for its breakfast.
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“We get to see a lot of bald eagles because we’re so close to the bay. They nest in the woods behind us and have dropped fish carcasses in the yard multiple times,” Holland says. “It’s cool that we get to see them all the time like that, but they usually keep their distance. I’ve never seen them on the ground, and definitely not going back and forth with a fox.”
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