Steve G
RAINBIRDER
Though not technically the best of images (light levels were low and my hands were shaking with excitement -or perhaps it was fear!) this is not a sight I am ever likely to see again!
These eagles are supremely powerful raptors which punch well above their weight.
Perhaps the images below will help display the power of this bird.
This female African Crowned Eagle was huge. She had just caught a small forest antelope (at the time I thought it was a Suni but looking at the images now I think it is a Harvey's (Red) Duiker) and had airlifted it onto this bough where she butchered and consumed the poor beast. Without any great effort she opened up the antelope's cranium and consumed the contents! Indeed she appeared to have crushed the duiker's skull and both eyes were popped from the orbits -a grisly and unpleasant sight!
Gazing into the eyes of a Crowned Eagle stirs a deep-rooted primal fear. These eagles also hunt primates! In fact there is now convincing evidence to suggest that these birds hunted early hominids (eg the "Taung child").
Crowned Eagles hunted our early ancestors!
It doesn't end there however as Peter Steyn wrote in Birds of Prey of Southern Africa (1982): "One grisly item found on a nest in Zimbabwe by the famous wildlife artist D. M. Henry was part of the skull of a young human. That preying on young humans may very occasionally occur is borne out by a carefully authenticated incident in Zambia where an immature Crowned Eagle attacked a 20 kg seven- year old schoolboy as he went to school. It savagely clawed him on head, arms, and chest, but he grabbed it by the neck and was saved by a peasant woman with a hoe, who killed it, whereafter both eagle and boy were taken to a nearby mission hospital. The boy was nowhere near a nest, so the attack can only have been an attempt at predation."
The second of the two images has caught the bird's nictitating membrane (a kind of horizontal third eyelid) giving the bird an almost demonic appearance.
Whilst one might expect this sort of sighting deep in a Congolese rain forest we actually found this bird in a small patch of riparian forest in Nairobi National Park. The sighting was down to the amazing skills of our guide Ben Gitari who really excelled himself this trip.
African Crowned Eagle was only first identified in Nairobi NP in December 2010 ( http://nairobinationalpark.wildlifedirect.org/2010/12/30/529-sp-birds-counting/ ) and Harvey's (Red) Duiker was only first identified in the park in September 2009 ( http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/nairobi-duiker938.html#cr ) -so what are the chances of catching both together?
Despite the pressures that Nairobi NP is under it is still well worth a visit -especially if you get off the beaten track & explore the hidden corners of the park. Indeed on a clear day you can even see the fires burning in the arrivals wing of the international terminal at JKIA!
These eagles are supremely powerful raptors which punch well above their weight.
Perhaps the images below will help display the power of this bird.
This female African Crowned Eagle was huge. She had just caught a small forest antelope (at the time I thought it was a Suni but looking at the images now I think it is a Harvey's (Red) Duiker) and had airlifted it onto this bough where she butchered and consumed the poor beast. Without any great effort she opened up the antelope's cranium and consumed the contents! Indeed she appeared to have crushed the duiker's skull and both eyes were popped from the orbits -a grisly and unpleasant sight!
Gazing into the eyes of a Crowned Eagle stirs a deep-rooted primal fear. These eagles also hunt primates! In fact there is now convincing evidence to suggest that these birds hunted early hominids (eg the "Taung child").
Crowned Eagles hunted our early ancestors!
It doesn't end there however as Peter Steyn wrote in Birds of Prey of Southern Africa (1982): "One grisly item found on a nest in Zimbabwe by the famous wildlife artist D. M. Henry was part of the skull of a young human. That preying on young humans may very occasionally occur is borne out by a carefully authenticated incident in Zambia where an immature Crowned Eagle attacked a 20 kg seven- year old schoolboy as he went to school. It savagely clawed him on head, arms, and chest, but he grabbed it by the neck and was saved by a peasant woman with a hoe, who killed it, whereafter both eagle and boy were taken to a nearby mission hospital. The boy was nowhere near a nest, so the attack can only have been an attempt at predation."
The second of the two images has caught the bird's nictitating membrane (a kind of horizontal third eyelid) giving the bird an almost demonic appearance.
Whilst one might expect this sort of sighting deep in a Congolese rain forest we actually found this bird in a small patch of riparian forest in Nairobi National Park. The sighting was down to the amazing skills of our guide Ben Gitari who really excelled himself this trip.
African Crowned Eagle was only first identified in Nairobi NP in December 2010 ( http://nairobinationalpark.wildlifedirect.org/2010/12/30/529-sp-birds-counting/ ) and Harvey's (Red) Duiker was only first identified in the park in September 2009 ( http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/nairobi-duiker938.html#cr ) -so what are the chances of catching both together?
Despite the pressures that Nairobi NP is under it is still well worth a visit -especially if you get off the beaten track & explore the hidden corners of the park. Indeed on a clear day you can even see the fires burning in the arrivals wing of the international terminal at JKIA!
