‘THOU SHALT NOT STEAL'... OR AT LEAST NOT ATTEMPT TO

The banks of the Gariep River at the Rightersberg camp in the Rightersveld National Park, offer a constant show of Pied Kingfishers hovering high above the water before taking a nose-dive to pounce on their prey. This is an endless spectacle not to be missed especially by a photographer wishing to capture some interesting action shots.

I was tracking a Pied Kingfisher as it made several attempts to catch a fish and after a dive (which I unfortunately missed as it was obscured behind a rock) it came up and sat on a rock with a small fish in its mouth. 

What was all this commotion about

I started taking some shots when suddenly there was a commotion as another Pied who had not been lucky enough to catch anything, tried to steal the fish from the mouth of the first Pied. An interesting tussle ensued for a few moments until the Pied with the fish in its mouth, fled the scene and relocated to another rock (right in front of me – how thoughtful of the Pied for a photographer wanting to capture an amazing sequence of action shots).

Tug of war between two Pied’s over a small fish

The second Pied followed and the scuffle continued with much squawking and flapping of wings. 

In one of the shots, if one looks closely, one can see how both Pied’s were pulling frantically at the fish (one at the head and the other at the tail of the fish), then suddenly the fish ended up being snatched away from its rightful owner. This angered the first Pied immensely and one can see how loud it was screaming at the other Pied with its mouth wide open.

It was not long thereafter that the fish was snatched back by the first Pied and the ‘fish thief’ escaped with nothing leaving the first Pied to enjoy its hard earned catch.

So the thief got away empty handed but the whole dirty deed was captured on CCTV (my camera) in high resolution...