Ever seen a bird carrying a turtle?

So I was on my way to a quite remote island off the coast of Abu Dhabi a few years ago – it was a beautiful spot on a lovely sunny day (as most days are in the United Arab Emirates), when I saw a large bird flying across in front of me which appeared to be carrying something in his talons.

As I was not driving and I had my camera at the ready I just managed to get a shot of the bird as it was swooping past – it was going reasonably fast so I only just caught it as it flew away but I just managed to get it in the frame.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a long lens on the camera at the time so this was the picture that I got:

At this point I still obviously couldn’t really tell what the bird was carrying (and in fact what type of bird it was) so let’s zoom in a bit closer:

So now you can really see that it is a bird carrying a turtle in its talons. I have to say I am not a bird expert so I don’t know what kind of bird it is except that I assume it is some kind of bird of prey! I know that falcons are very popular in the Middle East so maybe it is some kind of falcon? If anyone knows please enlighten me!

To get a slightly better look I have zoomed right in although by this point the picture loses some sharpness even though it was a reasonable SLR that I was using:

I guess that the bird has picked up the turtle for a spot of dinner although I would say it’s got to be hard to get it out of its shell.

If anyone has any info to share about the bird or the turtle please leave a comment below.