The Black Eagles in Poortview have shown behaviour associated with egg laying.
Reports by members of the Black Eagles Project Roodekrans claim that the eagles did not leave the nest unattended for days at a time with a photograph, taken by a camera trap, depicting one of the eagles having a meal in the nest.
It is not uncommon for the female to eat in the nest just before egg laying. This seems to be a practice run for when she must feed the chick.
Subsequent reports by the project monitors confirmed that the nest was never left unattended – a good sign that there may be eggs in the nest.
As the project has no way of knowing when the first egg was laid, they have no way of calculating the hatching date.
“If we can observe the first delivery of prey to the nest, and possibly see Makatsa feeding the new chick, we can backtrack 44 days and determine the date on which the first egg was laid. We will then also be able to calculate a period for the fledging to leave the nest,” said member of the project, Johann van der Berg.
He assured that the team would do their best to cover the period they expect the hatching to take place in the hope that a member will spot the first hatching.
READ: Black eagles continue to build new nest
