We drove off the dirt road and onto a green hill, stopped the light blue Holden station wagon and walked up to the top of the low hill which ended in a steep cliff overlooking Natal down below. We were on the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment and about 30m below us (I’d guess) was a nest, just as Robbie Sharratt had told Dad there would be, and on the nest was an eagle chick.
The main reason the ole man had taken his dearly beloved son on a rare outing was his new Canon FT QL SLR camera with a 200mm telephoto lens. It needed a subject, and there was the Black Eagle chick right there in the hot sun. Aquila verreauxii, now called Verreaux’s Eagle.
The way I recall it, we got pics of the nest and the chick, and a parent landed on or near the nest while we waited, but I could be imagining that part. Wonder where those Agfa slide pics are? I’d guess this was ca.1965 when I was ten years old.
It looked something like this (this pic from the Western Cape Black Eagle Project):
The top pic was taken at Giants Castle, also in the Drakensberg, by ‘Veronesi.’
PS: Normandien Pass is worth a visit. It’s beautiful country.
The Normandien Formation is a Triassic-age rock formation located around here, but about 251 million years before I was born. Lots of fossils! And Donald found one of them.
~~oo0oo~~
Vrystaat Confessions 