Animal Behaviour: Eagle gets mobbed

This is a montage made up from several stills of some fantastic behaviour we filmed recently in Sri Lanka's forests.

We were focussed on a big male white-Bellied Sea Eagle perched on top of a tree - he must have easily stood around 2ft tall while at rest. And then all of a sudden a tiny Red Wattled Lapwing, a marshland bird, whose guts more than make up for its small size, launched itself from the riverbank below and taunted the huge eagle, until he had enough and flew away.

But that wasn’t enough, even in flight the Lapwing mobbed the eagle until it made certain that it was gone for good! Now that's a brave little bird!

Size obviously does not always equate with the ability to intimidate in the world of birds…