Simon Thomsett

Category: Crowned Eagles | Date: Oct 24 2007 | By: admin

15th Oct 2007-Diary entry

Duchess spent all night in the same high perch on the forest edge.

During the night a pair of Wood Owls patrolled their patch and I upset the male very much by replying to his hoot. It was a miserable hour that followed with him making as threatening a hoot as his tiny frame could emit over the camp.The elephants stayed most of the night at the salt lick, but apart from that it was a good night’s sleep.

I left Duchess at 7.30AM and when I turned around I saw she had vanished. It would make a good field exercise to ask Amos to use the receiver to track her. I found him writing notes on top of the hill and we found Duchess almost immediately.

At 9.30AM a male Crowned Eagle appeared on a mountain ridge. He dived into a patch of trees. Amos and I went to go find him and ended up having a good 3.5 hr walk.

The eastern facing slopes presumably catch the bulk of the rain and here the trees grew big. Podo, pines, cedar, olives, Warburgia stood at tremendous height in one particular valley. It looked like home to Crowned Eagles.

At noon we appeared out of the cool forest on an open hilltop just in time to see the male at 300m. He stooped and rushed past and down behind the ridge with an audible rush of air. Magnificent to be at eye level, but my heart sank. Much worse he turned uttered a call and stooped down to appear with his mate. She was huge. They flew off together high above stooping at each other. I got some fairly good pictures esp of the female falling down with legs stretched out. Some of the pictures of the male show him barrel rolling into an inverted position, then falling vertically into half a roll, back on himself. From the intensity of the display I assume them to be near to egg laying, or that he had noticed an intruder.

As we returned we discussed were else we could release Duchess. This place, as wonderful as it is, harbored a pair that would in time surely find her. The least they would do would be to tolerate her but intimidation would lead to an inhibition to hunt. They could hound her out of the territory or kill her. We were not taking the chance.

Amos had a few ideas closer to the main camp. As we neared her last place of residence we noticed a massive and truculent group of Baboons, and a growling troop of male colobus in the trees. As predicted Duchess had left, probably threatened by these dangerous monkeys. We tracked the signal to a very short tree in a nasty patch of stinging nettles. Waited half an hour, walked around and around it with the radio bleep going full throttle. Silence. My mind came up with every dreadful scenario. But we were both hungry, and if she were ok she would make her appearance. Sure enough around 4pm, she had moved to another tree and it was easy to call her down. Then I exercised her flying across glades and the salt lick marsh. I had walked away some 300m when she suddenly brushed past my face at a terrifying speed and carried on to perch in a spindly tree on the escarpment edge.

Later I put her on a rock where her huge feet were unable to open. Her hind talon is so long and curved that it is impossible to open on a flat surface. So she stood both feet curled while I scrambled down a hill side on rocky terrain. Fed up with waiting and feeling uncomfortable she launched off. On landing she forgot to uncurl her feet, hitting the glove with a punch that took me off my feet and we both rolled down the slope. Annoyed she fluffed up her feathers and strode towards me to jump back up onto the fist. Amos radioed the main camp to see if anyone would pick us up. A car came before sunset. Arriving back at camp to the interest of all.

I felt a little ashamed that our first release was a failure, but it was better to be safe than sorry.