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Description
An Ichthyornis dispar running the gauntlet back to his nest. He is not too pleased at the pair of immature Nyctosaurus gracilis trying to make him give up his crop-full of fish.
The action is off-center, but I had already committed, so here we are.

On Ichthyornis: I should've given it a bigger body—feathers make a bird's body appear far larger than it really is.

On Nyctosaurus: Probably had a similar ecology to modern-day albatrosses, which do not engage in kleptoparasitism. However, pterosaurs did go through various ecological niches as they grew (Naish, Witton & Martin-Silverstone, 2021), so perhaps this behavior is not too impossible for younger individuals. (I remember reading somewhere that young bald eagles engage in piracy more often than adults, although I cannot remember the source). No talk of kleptoparasitism is complete without any mention of frigatebirds, which, as I learned while researching for this sketch, only obtained a minimal amount of food from piracy (Vickery & Brooke, 1994).

Naish, Witton and Martin-Silverstone on powered flight in hatchling pterosaurs: www.nature.com/articles/s41598…

Vickery and Brooke on kleptoparasitic interactions between greater frigatebirds and masked boobies: sora.unm.edu/sites/default/fil…

Description
An Ichthyornis dispar running the gauntlet back to his nest. He is not too pleased at the pair of immature Nyctosaurus gracilis trying to make him give up his crop-full of fish.
The action is off-center, but I had already committed, so here we are.

On Ichthyornis: I should've given it a bigger body—feathers make a bird's body appear far larger than it really is.

On Nyctosaurus: Probably had a similar ecology to modern-day albatrosses, which do not engage in kleptoparasitism. However, pterosaurs did go through various ecological niches as they grew (Naish, Witton & Martin-Silverstone, 2021), so perhaps this behavior is not too impossible for younger individuals. (I remember reading somewhere that young bald eagles engage in piracy more often than adults, although I cannot remember the source). No talk of kleptoparasitism is complete without any mention of frigatebirds, which, as I learned while researching for this sketch, only obtained a minimal amount of food from piracy (Vickery & Brooke, 1994).

Naish, Witton and Martin-Silverstone on powered flight in hatchling pterosaurs: www.nature.com/articles/s41598…

Vickery and Brooke on kleptoparasitic interactions between greater frigatebirds and masked boobies: sora.unm.edu/sites/default/fil…