by Carmel Rickard
A helper holds the eagle saved from drowning.
Willie Swanepoel and his son Pierre are this month’s birding heroes. When they checked one of their cement dams recently, they found a young Verreauxs’ eagle waterlogged, exhausted and almost drowned.
This eagle, also known as the African Black Eagle or Witkruisarend, is a specialist dassie hunter and a magnificent bird to watch soaring over cliffs and mountain edges where its prey tends to live.
With distinctive patterning on the back and rump (forming the ‘wit kruis’ of its name) it’s unmistakeable. And it’s a large bird by anyone’s standards, with a wingspan of 2.5m.
There’s a pair that we sometimes see flying around Burnet’s Kop on the road to Beersheba and several farmers in the area record seeing birds from time to time.
The Swanepoels rescued the bird and released it when its feathers were dry. Before that though, they brought it round to show me – imagine seeing this creature of the highest sky held like a puppy on my verandah!
It’s talons were spectacular – the ‘fist’ was way bigger than the gloved hands of Paulus Mokane, who works for the Swanepoels and who bravely held it on the back of the bakkie.
But it turns out that death by drowning is a common fate for raptors, and the black eagle is one of the four most likely to die in steep-sided reservoirs. Ornithologists say hundreds of raptors and vultures die like this every year. There’ve been at least 12 recorded mass drownings involving vultures; once 38 birds died, another time 64.
Next month – why they drown and how you can help prevent it.
