THE world’s biggest owl – the giant eagle owl – has a length of 58cm to 65cm and wingspan of 1.43pm.
It has powerful feet and talons, and is conspicuous from a distance by its pink eyelids and black eyes (other owls have yellow or orange eyes). Its ear tufts are smaller than other owls too.
It calls with a gruff, irregular ‘hoot hru hru hru’ which is deep and sometimes booming. It emits hisses as a threat call and does a bill-clattering alarm sound.
The giant eagle owl is found across Africa south of the Sahara, in South Africa from the Atlantic coast of the Orange River across to Zululand, in isolated pockets in the Eastern Cape and the rest of KZN.
It likes woodlands, savanna and tree-lined watercourses, and lives either solitary, in pairs or a family of three birds. Mostly nocturnal, it rarely hunts in daylight when it prefers to roost in large, shady trees.
Its flight is buoyant and it hunts by swooping onto its prey from its perch. The giant eagle owl may catch roosting birds in trees or insects in flight. Its feeding is very varied and includes mammal up to the size of vervet monkeys, and it has a secial preference for hedgehogs. The birds it preys on are from small white eyes up to secretary birds, ducks, raptors, smaller owls and many others. It even likes fish, frogs and reptiles.
Breeding season is from March until September and it makes its nest on top of other birds’ nests like the hamerkop, sociable weavers, pied crow and redbilled buffalo weaver.
It lays one or two round, white eggs which incubate for 38 to 39 days. Nestlings remain for about two months, they fly at about three months and remain with parents until the following breeding season.
The photographer was lucky to get this photo in full sun, hence its eyes were nearly closed. More giant eagle owls would naturally counteract and control the local vervet monkey numbers.
The Zulu name is iFubesi and in Afrikaans, reuse ooruil.
