While I report often on the fascinating (and plentiful ) amounts of impressive large game, it is often forgotten that in reality, this reserve is about so much more. One of the most astonishing facts is the sheer amount of bird wildlife here. We have over 400 species of birds on this reserve. We have more different types and Eagle species on this 36,000 acre reserve than in the whole of North America! So the message to our fellow birders out there: this is heaven for you guys! We have some of the world’s rarest bird species here too (saddle billed stork, for one …), and while the photos don’t reveal it, but some of these birds are HUGE. Think several meters of wingspan, that sort of huge.
We spotted a beautiful Eagle yesterday, and Uyai managed some nice shots of this bird: a Wahlberg Eagle
Wahlberg Eagles are medium-sized raptor birds, weighing in at a little below a kg, so they are light. But the wingspan can still reach up to 1.5m! It feeds on other little birds, reptiles and small mammals. It is quite common, and in general not considered to be under threat. The name of the Eagle was coined after the Swedish naturalist Johan August Wahlberg (sounds German though, doesn’t it?). Wahlberg was a keen African explorer, and he sent thousands of specimens back to Sweden for taxonomy reasons, over almost 2 decades of travels in Southern Africa. He was tragically killed in Botswana by a wounded elephant in the Okavango area, in 1856. He died doing what he loved. But he is one of those rare people having left a mark on this world, and 4 animals species and one tree type have been named after him, one being the Wahlberg Eagle.
