A Verreauxs' Eagle pair has nested in the mountains of the Cape Peninsula and
their first chick of the year hatched on Monday 30 June 2009.
The adult female remained on the nest most of the time that afternoon,
pruning, brooding on the remaining egg and feeding herself and the
fluffy white chick with a Rock Hyrax.
Meanwhile, the adult male perched
high on steep cliffs a few hundred meters away from the nest and
flew past several times, when the female sometimes joined him in
flight, calling mostly shortly after take-off. On one occassion,
he brought a stick to the nest. On another occassion, one of the
adults flew away with the dead Rock Hyrax and returned it back to
the nest!
Lucia
Rodrigues and her team monitor this last pair of Cape Town's
Verreauxs' Eagles and alerted Marje Hemp
on Sunday 29 June 2009 that the chick was about to hatch and an
observer was needed. So Callan and
Deirdre went up to observe and record
the event with pictures, video and sound recordings.
For more info on raptor research
and how to volunteer, please visit the Western Cape Raptor Research
Programme on the FitzPatrick
Institute and the Cape
Bird Club websites.
Birding Africa is a specialist birding tour company
customising tours for both world listers and more relaxed holiday birders,
and combining interests in mammals, butterflies, dragonflies, plants and
other natural history. Our guides know
the continents birds like few others; we've written two acclaimed guide
books on where to find Southern Africa's and Madagascar's best birds
and will guide you to Africa's and Madagascar's most diverse birding destinations.
Birding is more than our passion, it's our lifestyle and we are dedicated
to making professional best value trips filled with endemic species and
unique wildlife experiences. Since 1997, we've run bird watching tours
in South Africa and further into Africa for individual birders, small
birding groups and top international tour companies. We've run Conservation
Tours in association with the African
Bird Club and work with and consult for a number of other top international
tour companies and the BBC Natural History Unit.
For feedback from our guests, please see our tour
information pages. For trip reports, please see our Trip
Reports page.
