Dinner best eaten at arm’s length

A YOUNG member of the most powerful of all eagles is alive and well on the South Coast after having had a challenging time as a chick.

When “mama” crowned eagle one day brought home the severed arm of a vervet monkey she had ripped apart, the monkey’s hand kept clamping the baby’s beak as she tried to offer the limb as a meal.

Marina Beach resident and wildlife photographer Jacques Sellschop captured the moment on the San Lameer golf estate, where he has visited the nest over the past five years.

“The mother was inadvertently holding the tendon which opens and closes the monkey’s hand,” he said. “It was like a tug-of-war.”

Since that moment in 2013, Sellschop has watched the chick’s progress, photographing it catching a dassie – also called a hyrax – at the age of six months and, more recently, hearing it had been spotted in Hibberdene thanks to a ring placed around its leg.

Food for crowned eagles was abundant on the South Coast, said Sellschop. Prey, other than monkey and dassie, often includes small antelope.

With nature being all about balance, the monkeys have on one occasion, at least, got their own back on a crowned eagle at San Lameer.

Sellschop recalled having once seen a juvenile crowned eagle eyeing a group of baby monkeys. “A large mother monkey approached the baby eagle from behind and jumped on its back with enormous aggression.

“It seemed the adult monkey had the ability to differentiate between a juvenile and an adult crowned eagle.”

TRYING AGAIN: The mother crowned eagle releases her hold on the elbow tendon which allows her and the juvenile to contemplate the bizarre experience before a second attempt is made to thrust the arm down the juvenile’s gullet.

TUG OF WAR: A mother crowned eagle offers. a monkey’s forearm to its 10-week-old juvenile. She holds the arm by the digital flexor tendon at the elbow, which caused the hand to close over the chick’s beak. The harder the mother tugs in surprise at this unprecedented reaction, the more tightly the hand closes on the beak of the equally confused juvenile.

DOWN IT GOES: The size of the prey the eagles can swallow is extraordinary. Here the entire forearm of a vervet monkey disappears down the the hatch. So wide does the juvenile stretch its mouth that its eyes mist over with the protective membrane.

PICTURES: JACQUES SELLSCHOP ON ITS OWN: In a more dignified pose the juvenile, now six months old, protects its first kill, a dassie (hyrax) it caught on the ground.