Story of a combat - Does size matter?

Observed during my travel - Once upon a time.. there was a great battle in the sky...

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“The only thing that can combat fear is action. And there’s two actions. There’s fight and flight.”— Earl Sweatshirt

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Which action will the two warriors take I wondered. Well, let me start at the beginning..

In a quaint little town, on the edge of Arabian sea, wandered a soul with no specific agenda and no pressing needs of time (in other words, your truly on a beach vacation 😀)

The beach, when I arrived, was awash with magical colors of early morning waves of light...

The colors merged into one another and cast mesmerizing sheens over the boats that were moored, waiting for their daily run to sea...

As the sun treaded it's heavenly path, inching up, the hues of the colors changed constantly. The world became slowly awake around me. A pack of stray dogs started their morning walk and ran around lazily, looking for mischief.

The world seemed at peace. Great! On one hand, the harassed human in me loved the calm and quiet but the wildlife photographer in me lamented the lack of action!

What is a beach without even the waders to photograph!!

Consoling myself that perhaps, activity will go up as the day comes up and fishing starts, I waited around patiently. Since I was on a vacation, photography was not the main agenda. However, you know how it is when it comes to carrying a camera. It is the same like carrying a gun - your finger just itches to pull the trigger! 🤣

So - I waited on, parking myself on the beach carefully so that sand did not enter my shorts and reach unreachable places ...

A boat or two started bobbing on the sea. Surprisingly - they seemed devoid of any humans. Perhaps the fishermen were laying down and snoozing again, having cast their nets and waiting for fish to get entrapped.

As minutes ticked by and the sky took on a well light brilliantly blue hue, I heard a loud screech and looked up. That is when I saw this battle unfolding.

A Brahminy kite, a smallish bird was vigorously attacking a white bellied fish eagle, a bird which was almost twice it's size! I guess it was a territorial fight with each bird trying to claim the right to the skies near that patch of sea. See the difference of size here!

The big bully and the bigger bully

I am sure that the small kite would have felt extreme fear initially when the large eagle showed up on the scene. However, like a true warrior, the kite decided that fight or flight were the only two options and chose to FIGHT. Fight it did!

Attack is the best form of defence - goes the traditional wisdom.

I do not know how real that is but in this case, it did work.

The EPIC battle...

The kite went on attack, using it's small size to advantage. It was agile and flew circles around the larger eagle. Before the eagle could realize, the kite was above the eagle, in a position of advantage and scratched at the eagle's head with sharp claws. The eagle quickly realized what was happening and dived down.

As the kite dived after the eagle, in one mighty thrust of it's large wings, the eagle reversed it's dive and tried to go after the kite with it's claws.

The kite's neck would have been broken if the eagle had gotten a hold on it. The kite narrowly managed to escape the menace and turned swiftly to go on the attack once more

Twists and turns from both warriors continued. At one stage, both were almost in a claw lock with the eagle on it's back in the air! It looked so comical but was one of the fiercest battle moments...

The battle was so fierce that I automatically kept clicking snaps but totally forgot to take a video. It would have been cool to see the combat moves on video.

Finally, the brave little kite managed to harass the eagle so much that the eagle gave up and flew away - never to return! The small kite won.

So - SIZE DOES NOT MATTER! at least - not in this context 😀

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A big thank you for support

Thanks to c/hive-106444 (Feathered friends community) for providing this wonderful opportunity to present my experience and photographs. Thanks to @barbara-orenya and @melinda010100 for all the support and encouragement to this community. Special thanks to @nelinoeva also for starting the Species hunt initiative.
Thanks to HIVE for this wonderful platform. I am using the Hive logo in the collage for showing that the image and post is a dedicated HIVE post. Hope that is OK. The HIVE animation is a graphic created by @doze and free to use as per his post. Many thanks to @doze.

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Note: All images and collages in this blog are created by me, based on photos clicked by me personally and/or free vector images from Pixabay
Quotes used, if not credited, are either from unknown authors or are proverbial old sayings.

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