A tawny eagle was enjoying its meal in the middle of the road when 2 bateleurs flew in to challenge it! The eagle was outnumbered, but it put up a fight and created a show!
It all started off as a typical safari, Nick left camp and was scanning the bushes for animals, when something caught his eye in the road.
Tawny Eagle With Catch
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It was a tawny eagle and it was using its razor-sharp beak to pull away at something. Nick came close enough to identify what it was eating, and it was a highly venomous puff adder!
Puff adders are among the most toxic snakes in South Africa and are notorious for their venom that destroys tissue! Puff adders can also be dangerous to birds of prey, but tawny eagles are well-equipped to deal with snakes, and encounters are often one-sided.
As soon as Nick was close enough to see it, he fully expected the tawny eagle to flap away with its meal, but it didn’t! Instead, it stayed exactly where it was and tried to gobble the snake down, almost like it knew something was coming.
Bateleurs Arriving
This already made the sighting unique, and just as Nick was thinking about it, a bateleur pair came swooping down out of nowhere! The bateleurs worked together and teamed up to try and bully the tawny eagle from different sides!
Tawny eagles are bigger than bateleurs, so seeing the smaller birds put up a challenge was a surprise! Smaller, they might have been, but they were far from unprepared, and worked together to overwhelm the tawny eagle!
Eagles Meeting
The tawny eagle had to act quickly! There wasn’t enough room to escape, and the last thing it wanted to do was lose its hard-earned meal, so, it decided to fight back! The tawny eagle targeted the smaller immature bateleur and lunged toward it, while still holding onto the snake with its talons.
