Food.

Except that in the end it wasn’t food in the way I was expecting it to be.

This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is Food.

I had a dozen ideas for the challenge, none of which I was particularly happy with. I then remembered this incident and decided to tell a bit of a story.

The first photo shows a Herring Gull standing over a fish covered in sand on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario. After a while the Herring Gull lost interest in the fish and left it lying on the sand. It was still lying there when I packed the camera away and headed home. But that is the end of the story.

The story begins when an Osprey patrolling the Lake Huron shallows dives in and catches a fish. This is witnessed by various Herring Gulls who then start harassing the Osprey trying to get it to drop the fish. In this photo an immature Herring Gull is coming in from the side of the Osprey in an attempt to steal the fish.

Eventually the Osprey is forced to drop the fish. It lands on the shoreline where an adult Herring Gull claims the fish to pick at it briefly before losing interest.