Simon Thomsett

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