A close encounter with a hawk-eagle!

When Nature finds you..

Oct 09, 2024

After a night of heavy rain, we awoke to a very foggy morning. My 2 year old and I stood by the bedroom window, watching the swarms of flying termites (alates) as they appeared and disappeared in the cloud that had enveloped us. Suddenly we heard a commotion outside--a tap-tap-tapping sound and squirrels shrieking. I assumed the pigeons, bulbuls and squirrels were having a rare tiff over the breadcrumbs, and I peered out of the hall window to see what was going on. You can imagine my surprise when I saw a hawk or eagle or some sort of raptor trapped behind the fence of our little garden, and flapping its wings frantically, trying to get out!

I opened the front door very slowly to get a good peek at him and try to click a picture or two. When he saw me, he got very agitated and tried to fly away, but there wasn't enough space between our closely packed flower pots and the fence, and he kept getting his talons caught in the wire mesh. I was afraid he would injure himself, so I gingerly tried to move the fencing out to create a gap for him to fly out--our fence is a movable temporary structure my husband quickly put together to keep out the porcupines that were raiding our peace lillies and anthuriums! The bird, of course, didn't trust me and scooted across to the opposite corner of the fence. So I walked over and moved that end outwards as well, noticing then how beautiful he was with his hook shaped beak and menacing talons, wariness in his big beautiful eyes as he watched my every move.

Fear and warning in his big beautiful eyes

There's something about looking directly into the eyes of a wild creature that just cannot be expressed, only felt. As I moved the fencing out inch by inch, he just kept clinging to it. I noticed one of his talons had gotten lodged in the soft wooden frame. Now I was afraid my efforts to help him may actually cause him injury. So I told my 2 year old that we needed to do something different to help him. I thought if I could get close enough to grab him somehow, then I could help him over the fence and hopefully he would then be able to fly away. I wasn't sure if he had injured himself when he landed in our garden, or during his frantic efforts to escape.

I bravely put on my gardening gloves and armed with a cloth, I gently approached him talking soothingly to him the whole time. But he wasn't happy with my efforts and became agitated again, clinging to the wire mesh with his talons. So I abandoned my plan and came indoors to remove my gloves, when suddenly, in a split second, we saw him take flight, soar over the boundary fence and glide gracefully down the hillside. It was such a joy and a relief to watch him fly away, knowing he was okay.

As my daughter and I scanned through our book on birds endemic to this region, we quickly identified the bird as a “changeable hawk-eagle”, a fierce predator in the bird kingdom. It's just as well he didn't accept my help, because that beak and talons could have torn through gloves and flesh! And what was a hawk-eagle doing in our garden? We have a few theories - perhaps the fog disoriented him a bit and he misjudged his landing, and landed in our garden instead of on a nearby tree; or perhaps he was trying to catch his breakfast—most likely a wood-pigeon that was feeding on breadcrumbs we had put out that morning—and landed in our garden instead. We read that these raptors have a preference for smaller birds, and I remembered my husband had rescued a badly maimed wood-pigeon a few weeks ago, which sadly didn’t make it. We had blamed the neighbourhood cat for the carnage, but perhaps it was the hawk-eagle! He was probably a juvenile, given his smaller size and the absence of a crest on his head, which would also explain his inexperience. Whatever it was that had drawn him to our garden, it was clear from his behaviour that he had not intended to land inside our fence. We were just lucky and fortunate to have such a close encounter with a beautiful wild creature!

Thank you so much for being here, and reading this post. If you enjoyed reading it and would like to Buy me a coffee, I’d appreciate it very much. 🙏🙂

Peace & Love.