Our first Bird Challenge of 2019 is a slightly more unorthodox take on the concept.
We’ve talked before about how birds don’t always sit still for you to identify them. The same can be said for photographing them, with one’s efforts often ending in exasperating failure. Even the longest lens sometimes won’t suffice to get you enough distance not to spook them, as birds can be notoriously skittish.
Then when your camera is away or your focus is elsewhere, you’ll suddenly notice a Martial Eagle in the tree immediately above you, sitting calmly as if to say, “Take my picture”, but by the time your lens is on him, he’s flown.
Today’s picture went something like that. You can clearly see I missed the shot, but a 600mm lens isn’t exactly the type of thing you just whip up!
Take a look at some of the finer details on this one, as they are your big clues.
Answer to be revealed in tomorrow’s Week in Pictures…
Good luck!
Its an adult Fish Eagle – Haliaeetus vocifer.
Thinking it must be in the Eagle family. Seems to have shorter talons. African Fish Eagle?
African Fish Eagle?
Hi James, Broad dark wings with ginger forward section below; dark bill -if indeed that is what can be seen on the left between the legs; short white tail (with maybe a faintest possibility of the remnants of terminal darker band, suggesting a subadult); a suggestion on the right side that the breast is white as are both sides of the upper back indicating that the neck too is white – all suggest African Fish Eagle. The legs are the problem being more of a chalky white rather than yellow, but they are muddy! The juvenile birds do have paler legs and the photographs in Roberts show much whiter legs than the distinctly yellow legs in the drawings so I am going with a Fish Eagle in the final stages of attaining adult plumage.
Ian
Something about this bird says African Fish Eagle to me. It’s the white tail and the dead tree from which it seems to have launched itself. I am guessing African Fish Eagle.
With white tail, black flight feathers with the auburn/red upper feathers i’d say this is an African fish Eagle.
I want to say fish eagle, with the wing colour and the legs?