It’s life in a cage for first captive-born Martial Eagle
A rare Martial Eagle, which was the first of its species to be born in captivity is doing well despite being abandoned by its mother at the Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre in Hoedspruit.
The chick, born to a breeding pair of Martial Eagles at Moholoholo, hatched from its egg under the watchful eyes of staff members on 13 May after spending 39 days in an incubator.
The Martial Eagle is Africa’s biggest eagle, with a wingspan of up to 2,4 metres. A fully grown bird is said to have enough power in its talons to break a man’s arm, and individuals have been known to capture prey as large as impala calves.
Updates on the Moholoholo Facebook page documented the historic hatching of the chick.
“Our Martial Eagle egg that we had been anxiously watching, finally started hatching. After a long 29 hours we had South Africa’s very first captive bred martial eagle. Our breeding pair has produced an egg six times but the egg was broken each time so to avoid the same thing happening again this egg was removed and was put in an incubator,” read the posts.
After hatching, the 120 gram chick was reportedly not accepted by its mother. Staff were forced to remove the bird from the nest and found a novel way of hand-raising the baby in the hope that it would imprint on its own species.
“A nest was made for the baby out of sticks and leaves and the chick was being fed with a glove that resembled a mother eagle. The staff that fed the baby made sure that they stayed hidden behind a curtain so that it would not associate people with food and hopefully not imprint onto people,” said Moholoholo founder Bryan Jones.
Despite these efforts, Jones said that the sad reality was that the two month old eagle was doing well but would never be able to be released back into the wild and would be used for educational purposes.
“Young eagles need at least nine to ten months with their mother and father in order to learn how to fly and hunt. The only thing we can do, without putting the bird down, is to use it for educational purposes and as an ambassador for the species,” he explained.
The Martial Eagle is listed as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and the population is suspected to have undergone rapid declines owing to habitat loss, poisoning and pollution.
Jones added that it was as yet impossible to tell the gender of the eagle as size is the only distinguishing factor between males and females. – The Write News Agency
Photos courtesy of Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre