The Cape Bird Club

Booted Eagles nesting on the Constantiaberg
                                                                       by  Ann and Johan Koeslag.

A few years ago, I loved the time of year when I would see the Booted Eagle going out to hunt as I arrived on my early morning visits to the Constantiaberg. After a while I realised that they were becoming, if not common,  more frequently sighted than they had been.

In 2008 while on a visit to the Glen Dirk Estate on the slopes of Bischops Court Hill Sharon Yodaiken and I watched first one Booted Eagle take off from a stand of eucalyptus trees followed immediately bya second. They were very obiviously a pair. Then Andrew Jenkins mentioned that he too had seen a pair together. So it only became a matter of time before a nest would be found. On the basis of information received, I had been keeping an eye open for possible nesting places, like a nest at the base of a small tree or bush on a cliff. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a confirmed report of Booted Eagles nesting on the Cape Peninsula. I fully expected Lucia Rodrigues, of Black Eagle fame, to find the first one, thinking that nothing on the entire mountain range would escape her eagle eye.

 At the begining of this year Johan, who spends a lot of time taking long walks on the mountain, came home and said that on one of the paths there was a juvenile "something - or - other raptorwise" being very noisy. The desscription didnt fit any of the usual suspects, so we tucked the information away in the hope that later further sightings would provide the solution to what it was.

On 11 October 2009 he was on the same pathe and had found a nest with a pair of Booted Eagles calling. The male and brought in food and the female came off the nest to eat. The male sat on the nest while she ate the prey he had brought her in a nearby tree. I was away at the time so it was only on 19 October that I managed to get the pictures and in the light of Johan's previous observation, this is at least the second year that these birds have nested there.

And where are they nesting? In a eucalyptus tree on a very steep slopenext to a cliff,. I swear they chose that place just to confuse me!

photograph by Ann Koeslag

The Booted Eagle.