Tanzania - 2020 - Part 8 - Featuring Martial Eagle in flight

/

Five photos of the Martial Eagle featured in the previous blog entry.

Martial Eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus)
Olympus OM-D E-M1X camera
40-150mm f/2.8 Lens at 150mm
1/1600 sec at f/5.6, ISO 500

When the bird showed signs of flying, I switched to the 40-150mm lens. With a wingspan of about 6 ft, I was almost sure parts of the bird would not be in the frame if I continued using the 300mm lens. All 5 photos were taken with the settings shown above.

The martial eagle is an apex predator; it does not have any natural enemies.

Martial eagle is listed as Vulnerable because of rapid declines in numbers over the last 50 years. Viewed as a threat to livestock by farmers, they are often shot or poisoned. Habitat loss is also a factor in the declining population.

Martial eagle has a slow reproduction rate. There is almost always only one egg in the single hatch which occurs every two years.

Martial eagles are highly sexually dimorphic. The average weight of males is about 7 pounds; the average for females is around 11 pounds. A recent study forming the basis of a master's thesis (link follows) reported that the larger females preyed on larger species than the smaller males. The most frequent prey for the males were hares (23.9%), helmeted guineafowl (17.9%), black-bellied bustard (10.3%), and red-necked spurfowl (9.4%) whereas impala (34.2%) and Thomson's gazelle (15.1%) were the most frequent prey of the females. The author notes that such a division of food resources would reduce direct competition between pair mates that hunt limited prey populations within similar areas. Link

/ /

David Sparks

I retired in 2005 after 40 years of research and teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (24 years), the University of Pennsylvania (8 years) and the Baylor College of Medicine (8 years). Photography is my retirement hobby.

Nature photography, especially bird photography, combines a number of things that I really enjoy: bird-watching, being outdoors, photography, travel, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts.  I now spend much of my time engaged in these activities.

David Sibley in the preface to The Sibley Guide to Birds wrote "Birds are beautiful, in spectacular as well as subtle ways; their colors, shapes, actions, and sounds are among the most aesthetically pleasing in nature."  My goal is to acquire images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of selected species as well as images that highlight the engaging behaviors the birds exhibit.