Only Room for One
As soon as I arrived at the salt marsh this morning the first thing I saw was an apparent stand off between these two young alligators.
They faced each other down for a brief instant, but things escalated quickly when the one on the left lunged out and chased off his competitor. Once that task was accomplished, the victorious warrior was able to lay there with a smug look on his proud face.
The vanquished intruder floated off meekly not to be seen again for the rest of the morning, but there really is plenty of room for everybody.
Our brave gladiator did pick up a little friend later on however. A small plover took a liking to him and followed along the edge of the marsh for a while as the alligator scooped up some hard earned breakfast.
Phil Lanoue Photography 
Super shots of the two rivals. The plover seems to be quite fascinated by Mr. A. 🙂
Yeah Mr. A found himself a cute little friend there!
Exciting to see a some action! Hopefully no-one got hurt:)
Neither of them ended up getting hurt, but the loser might have suffered a hit to his pride.
Glad you enjoyed seeing these guys in action.
scaryyyyyyy!!!!!!
Nooooo they are just big babies! 😀
ok
have u seen my blog on http://www.elyasambition1.wordpress.com
Just checked it out, lots of good stuff.
have u seen my blog? http://www.elyasambition1.wordpress.com
Am chuckling, I can almost hear and feel the water splash all over re: second pic. Your pictures and stories never cease to amaze, Phil! …Please say “Hello” to all our creature friends at the marsh this morning. 😀
It all happened and was all over so quick, I didn’t even know at the time if I captured anything other than the splash. But at least we can see some alligator heads and faces there. Thanks for looking and commenting!
I do love that action shot. Well done by everyone.
Glad you liked that one. I literally had just arrived and these were the first shots I took. Got lucky in that I had the camera set in advance for settings that were more or less appropriate for getting some action. I otherwise had no time to set anything.
I do love the smug look on the victor’s face. Great captures.
He does have quite the smug self impressed look doesn’t he?!
What do they scoop up for a meal?
When feeding like this they are scooping up mouthfuls of small fish and shrimp. In fact they get the glass shrimp all fired up and they shoot out of the water in all directions when the alligator starts sloshing all around.
Sometimes the gator will lay still with the lower portion of their mouth open under that water waiting for some unfortunate creature to swim in.
I’ve never heard of glass shrimp. Will have to look them up.
In this picture I think you can see some jetting up out of the water in a panic as the alligator feeds on mouthfuls of whatever it can get. They are also known as ghost shrimp but we mostly call them glass shrimp around here.
https://phillanoue.com/2013/09/08/the-fish-were-jumping-last-night/alligator-fishing-in-salt-marsh-04/
I checked and do see them in the picture. They looked like water splashing when I first saw the blog.
Scatti stupendi dei due mentre si affrontano!!
Grazie Pat, glad you like these!
Fantastic shots.
Thanks much for commenting and glad you liked these.