Simon Thomsett

Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles, Rosy and Girl in Naivasha, Uncategorized | Date: Sep 29 2008 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

From Sarah Higgins:

At 1.45 this afternoon, Rosy laid claim to his new territory!

This is the first time that he has used his territorial call since he has been in Naivasha. It was also the first time that I have ever heard a Crowned Eagle’s full cry and I was momentarily confused by this unknown sound. But then my heart swelled with joy - Rosy is feeling at home enough to start laying claim to his new patch. So - another milestone is passed, and I am sure that Girl too will be taking comfort from her male’s warrior cry.

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Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles, Rosy and Girl in Naivasha | Date: Sep 28 2008 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

Sarah Higgins is kindly providing a home for Rosy and Girl and will be giving updates on their progress in their new home. Here is Sarah’s first instalment:

Sarah and Girl

My building team had a big job finishing the eagle ‘Palace’ in time for the grand arrival - we even had to redo the pool because the first version leaked! The most interesting part of building the eagles new home as far as I was concerned, was the building of the eagle’s nest in the central tree. It was a bit like doing a three dimensional puzzle and so was rather fun and I was really quite proud of my handiwork - but I am quite prepared for Girl to take one look at it and take the whole thing apart! I have to confess that I now have a huge amount of respect for an eagle’s nest building ability when I think of the trouble I had, with two hands, and they do it all with only their beak!

Simon brought the birds up on 25th after a bit of a battle to get them calm enough to travel. Apparently they both took ages to react to the medication that he gave them. He eventually arrived somewhat frazzled at lunch time and didn’t stay too long as he still had to get back home and pack ready to leave at 6am next morning to catch the plane to UK. He left one of his men, Mwanzia, with me to help look after the birds, plus all the medications that Rosy needs for his eyes.

Poor Rosy really can’t see anything, not even light/dark. It must be so miserable for him. He listens hard though and is aware of everything going on around him. He needs drops in his eyes four times a day but he is really very good about having them put in. Apart from that he is in very good health and eating well. He likes to ‘kill’ his half rabbit before he eats it and when you watch those talons at work you realise just how powerful a bird he is. Apart from that he is very sweet and ‘talks’ back to you when you talk to him.

Girl on the other hand has been sussing out her new quarters. Most of the first morning she spent testing all the branches and perches - and the roof wire! Later she spent a lot of time looking up at the branches above her. We have tried to make her shed as similar as possible to the one she had at Athi but of course the big difference is that the new shed is under some trees whereas in Athi there were no trees. She is much calmer today and I hope will settle in soon and be more relaxed about her new home. The biggest difference for both birds of course is the amount of noise around here as this is a working farm. They are used to the Athi plains surrounded only by natural sounds. I hope that they will soon get used to things here.

I have found a good local source of rabbits for the eagles, which was a bit of a worry as my own rabbits, although they breed like, well, rabbits, would not have been able to keep up with the eagle’s needs. These rabbits have come via a friend of mine, Josephat Macharia, a primary school teacher and a trainer in sustainable farming. When I told Josephat that I needed rabbits for the Eagles he asked the children in his little school if they had any rabbits for sale and thus 20 rabbits were delivered on the day that the eagles arrived. This means that Rosy and Girl are benefiting the poorer side of our community which can only be a good thing.

Mwanzia has taken on rabbit duties as well as his eagle duties and is doing an excellent job. This morning though we found one of the large rabbits dead in the rabbitry, with its head all covered in saliva. It appeared that we had been visited by a snake in the night! Having killed the rabbit the snake had tried to swallow it but apparently couldn’t get its mouth past the rabbit’s shoulders and so gave up. On counting the rest of the rabbits we realised that the snake must have then taken a smaller rabbit. We found where the snake had got in, through a crack beside the gate (promptly blocked!), but failed to find the snake itself. A little later in the day my dog Cricket started making a fuss by the hedge and on investigation there was a small (6ft) python with an obvious rabbit-shaped bump in its middle!

The culprit

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Category: Raptor Expedition | Date: Sep 25 2008 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

The final preparations are under way for the raptor expedition. Simon is moving Rosy and Girl to their new home in Naivasha today. He will be travelling to the UK on Friday to sort out a couple of things, after which he joins me in Ireland to help transport all the equipment back to Kenya. We will be travelling on 4th October, arriving in Nairobi on the following day. We have a busy first week, with three locations to visit, after which we will be going to a very remote location to release Mutt, a Bearded Vulture (Lammergeyer).

The first few months of the expedition will be spent in Kenya, where there is a huge diversity in habitat and, accordingly, raptor species. We hope to observe and photograph a large portion of the African species during this time. We will also be spending time in Ethiopia and possibly Tanzania before Christmas. In the New Year, we will be travelling south, after which we would like to spend some time in western and central Africa. We will interrupt our car expedition either in spring or in autumn of next year to catch the raptor migration through Israel.

The expedition is intended for data collection, as well as for material for the books. We hope to gather as much data as possible. We are in the process of trying to raise funds for this data collection so that we may be as thorough as possible. For example, it would be of great value to the exercise to be able to extend the trip to islands off mainland Africa, such as Madagascar. Finding funding is crucial to making that happen.

We will make every effort to keep this blog going regularly, if not daily. There will be times when we are away from any kind of Internet facility and for that, we are sorry. Sheryl Bottner has very kindly offered to help us with our Internet management while we are on the road. We will have a Facebook group going soon, as well as other networking tools. I hope you all enjoy following our adventure and feel free to participate by making comments, starting discussions, etc.

We’d like to thank everyone who has been so supportive throughout Rosy’s eye ordeal. News on his progress will follow soon. It has also been great to have everyone’s encouragement for this expedition. I hope it is successful and can contribute to the protection of raptors as well as to conservation more generally.

Tags: bird of prey, Data, expedition, Kenya, raptor, thanks

3 responses so far

Category: Raptors, Rehabilitation | Date: Sep 21 2008 | By: simonthomsett

On the morning of the 18th September I was on the computer for hours and was very relieved to get a phone call from Robin Stanley near Salaama. He had what he thought was a young African Hawk Eagle, caught in a water trough near-dead from drowning.
I put the phone down and was in the car gunning down the Mombasa Road in minutes. At times like these I am like a kid on Christmas morning. What can it be, is it going to be OK, will it fly again, can it be released, should it be flown first???

An hour later it dawned on me that whatever it was I could not afford the time to lavish on it as I once did. Just last week Martin Wheeler, who took my Verreaux’s Eagle, phoned to say he had an injured Martial Eagle. I had to control my urge to race off to go rescue it. The raptor rehab side of life has had to be put on hold. But there was no denying the feeling of euphoria at something new and something that might need help as I neared the Stanley’s farm.

David and Jane Stanley own a beautiful small ranch near the edge of the Kapiti Plains, as it slopes into the Tsavo nyika type woodland. Suddenly the habitat changes from (only a few years ago) open endless wildlife-filled black cotton grassland, to the broadleaf woodland on red ochre soils. The temperature and humidity goes up. It looks and feels like Tsavo to a highlander like me, but it is the epitome of formerly common landscapes of the Machakos hills.

This ranch is increasingly surrounded by dense shambas, and will soon be the sole remnant of the region’s ingenious fauna and flora. All the surrounding large co-op ranches that were intact examples of native wild plants and animals were recently sub-divided due to shareholder demands, tough livestock business and a land-saving wildlife industry left to flounder.

When I stopped the car, a large pack of grinning dogs came up to the car followed by Jane as she pushed them aside. I was warmly welcomed by them all and ushered quickly up behind the old family homestead to a small shed, in which was an eagle. I am hopeless in such situations and must appear rude to my hosts as I have to quench my curiosity immediately. On looking in I was suddenly perplexed. I am usually pretty confident at raptor identification, but this was a small eagle with a white head, neck and shoulders. The throat was streaked white and tan. Then the white bled out into a uniform brown. I looked at the nostril, was it round or oblong? Was the legs long and thin? Did the mouth go beyond the eye? It wasn’t an African Hawk Eagle (my heart took a downward plunge but recovered itself rapidly because this was even more interesting).

I took it out and held it gently in my hands, being careful not to stress it unnecessarily as Robin and David took pictures. In the picture you can see that I am still grinning stupidly, partly from relief that it was going to be ok!

After a good few minutes I concluded it was a first year just moulting male Tawny Eagle. No big deal. Still fairly common species (although rapidly declining in Kenya). But it has unique features that need to be recorded. I have seen totally white topped Tawnies before, but on close inspection saw that it was all due to UV bleaching. I have never seen a white topped chick in the nest. I concluded long ago that all Tawnies are born rufous tawny, and get paler according to UV sunlight exposure, soil type and even chemical bleaching (such as in soda lakes). The mixtures of plumages in Tawny Eagles is incredible, and one of the main reasons why there are so many erroneous records of much rarer species. In the picture with the three juvenile Tawnies you can see just how different looking they can be! No wonder we get some whacky records.

The head photo of this particular bird shows a patterning that is unusual. The white on the head has fine black central shafts. I find it difficult to believe that it was born the usual tawny brown, then paled over time to reach this colouration. He is tiny too, no bigger than a large female Wahlberg’s Eagle. There is a pale morph of the Lesser Spotted Eagle, but they have long stove pipe legs, puny feet and rounded nostrils in a kite-like face.
He is certainly a Tawny Eagle, but it does bring to light the poor extent of our knowledge on even common species of raptors in East Africa. Had one been force to open a guide book, one would not have seen the vast array of differing Tawny Eagle morphs. Every eagle to my knowledge, bar a few such as the very mono-morphic Verreaux’s Eagle and Martial Eagle have odd morphs. Even the African Hawk Eagle juvenile has a pale morph in this part of Africa as yet un-described in literature. In most cases it is therefore best to assume that if one thinks one has seen a rare eagle, such as either the Lesser or Greater Spotted Eagle, or Eastern Imperial Eagle, to conclude that it is more likely to be a “rare” morph of a common species.

I took the Tawny Eagle home after a great lunch served on their verandah surrounded by a huge flock of wild Guineafowl. The view remains beautiful with distant mountains striding down towards the coast far to the east. The talk was one so typical of those deeply and more importantly personally involved in day to day wildlife issues and their conservation. David is the long standing chairman of the Machakos and Makueni Rancher Owners Association and the Machakos Wildlife Forum. He and Jane spoke of the need to make wildlife pay, otherwise it will go. This had been the main theme of the forum and it demonstrably worked well. When all rights were removed and no reward was possible for landowners the sale of plots was inevitable. The bush meat trade that blossomed as a result is totally out of control today. Short sighted and yet well intentioned “Band aid” solutions to problems typifies wildlife conservation policy in Kenya.

Such people who have vast practical experience must be heard and respected irrespective of the fact that what they say may not sound at first as pleasant solutions. As I drove back home, I still saw a beautiful land with so much potential for wildlife conservation that would benefit the people who “own” it. This part of Kenya is too valuable to loose.

I took the Tawny out of his box and put him in a large shed. I then retired to look at him from a distance. All his bravado left him. His shoulders sank and his head drooped, till he closed his eyes. He needs a lot of good food and at least a few days to gather his strength. But he will be fine, and I will soon release him.

Tags: Rehabilitation, Release, Tawny Eagle

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