As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Rare monkey-eating eagle chick hatched in the Philippines


Photo: AFP/PHILIPPINE EAGLE FOUNDATION
New hatchling raises hopes for survival of ‘critically endangered’ eagle that is a fearsome predator but faces extinction


By Philip Sherwell, Bangkok

2:20PM GMT 10 Dec 2015

It is a fearsome predator with a wingspan of up to six feet that hunts a diet of monkeys, flying lemurs, squirrels, lizards and piglets.

But such is the imminent danger of extinction of the monkey-eating eagle that is the national bird of the Philippines, conservationists are celebrating the hatching of a rare chick in captivity.

The raptor, which is found only in the rapidly vanishing tropical rainforests of the Philippines, reaches a height of more than three feet when fully-grown and is one of the world’s largest eagles.

The bird is famed for the distinctive shaggy crest formed by its elongated nape feathers.

The chick, hatched at a conservation centre, was the first to be born in two years and just the 26th in 23 years of the project. Conservationists hailed its arrival as a major boost in the giant bird’s struggle against extinction.

There are only about 600 monkey-eating eagles in the wild as their numbers have been slashed by hunting and loss of their natural habitat to development.

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