It had only been a few weeks since I arrived at Mopaya Safari Lodge in the Balule reserve. Arriving and working in the Greater Kruger National Park is a dream which becomes true! While I was discovering Doreen, part of Balule along the Olifant River, we had a sighting, to say the least… Unusual. But let me put you in the context first.
From Doreen I'm able to see Ngala Camp across the river, the camp where I did some of my trainings to become a guide, I love that part of Balule so much. The vegetation is dense, green all year round, there is plenty of water and therefore quite a few elephants, waterbucks but also water birds! This place is so rich! It also has a wide variety of bee-eaters, including white-fronted ones, which use the vertical sandy edges along the river to dig their galleries and make their nests.
My colleague Zeze and I were therefore observing these birds in particular, which I had been looking to photograph for months, not far from the phuza spot on Crocodile Road when he signaled to me the presence of a huge bird of prey at the top of the nearby koppie. Neither one nor two and here we are armed with our binos. Our feathered friend was none other than a young martial eagle, his head still dotted with white feathers that he will soon swap for a totally brown face when he will reach maturity.
Suddenly the bird took flight and hovered in our direction, getting closer and closer until it landed violently to the right of our vehicle, in the bushes, letting a large cloud of dust rise. The other birds howled in the presence of the predator and began to adopt a behavior called "mobbing" where birds of all races gather to hunt a common enemy. The eagle began to walk, wings raised towards the sky, the talons full of a poor victim, a crested francolin which was there a little earlier with a fellow creature. The survivor of the unfortunate duo began to shout at the top of his lungs, demonstrating his courage and his instinct for survival by confronting, in his own way, the eagle who was forced to flee to eat his loot in peace on a nearby tree thus offering us this wonderful and exciting sighting!
The martial eagle itself is an imposing and very impressive bird of prey to observe so having the privilege of being a spectator of such an event is extremely rare! We were really lucky. We stayed there for 30 short minutes, it was not too much to appreciate this incident.
A killing is always something full of emotion, sadness for some, excitement for others,… It all depends on our vision and interpretation of animal feelings and our level of anthropomorphism… It is simply necessary to remember that it is about nature, the human being does not interfere in this case of figure. This is the law of the bush. Wild animals then show us their most impressive behaviors in terms of survival in their natural environment.
No matter how we feel about such sighting it should be seen as a privilege, we are guests of Mother Nature, and once again She has given us an incredible gift with this Martial Eagle.
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