Short review of the Short-toed Eagle specialists meeting which was held in Florac, centre of Cévennes National Park /map/ (Lozère, France), on October 13-14:
• 3e Rencontre Circaète : Florac, 13 et 14 Octobre 2012 (Fr). Heartfelt thanks to Renaud Nadal for sharing this! The meeting was successful. Let’s wish the organizers to maintain this good tradition in the future!
Hello everyone,
I am writing to tell a strange incident happened yesterday: a lady calls the CRAS Pignola (PZ, Italy) /map/ saying she had found two «hawks» in trouble and asks if she can deliver. After an hour she arrived with a pair of Short-toed Eagle! The huge female is in good condition and will probably be released in a couple of days.
The male instead had deep lacerations to the chest and throat, so as to show the crop.
Basically the skin in some places no more, and also the pectoral muscle is damaged.
The crop was full ….. and a tail sticking out from the bill….. we pulled out a snake of 1.20 m ….. probably had it in the throat the day before, when the lady found them and brought home with him.
The strange thing is that the lady has told of seeing them sticking up in the air to fall on the ground. At that point they roll in a pond for irrigation, where she intervened.
According to the reconstruction the healthy one (the female) has repeatedly attacked the other’s throat causing him serious injuries.
A reconstruction does not convince me at all, has anyone had such experiences? That is, if by chance you know so much aggressive behavior between Short-toed Eagles?
Consider that the male will almost certainly not survive due to septicemia in very advanced stage.
This story is published on the Infos Étang de Berre website:
• René Coste, 2010 – Le sauvetage de «Balthazar», le circaète blessé, les amoureux des beaux oiseaux et, un vent de colère [Salvation of «Balthazar» – a wounded Short-toed Eagle] – 
(Fr).
It has reminded me a story of «Jeanne» – an invalid young Short-toed Eagle, which had been found at the nesting site with a broken right wing in 2008. A short article about the bird was written by me and was kindly translated by Bernard Joubert for its publication in the 8th issue of La Plume du Circaète. The eagle had lived 2 years and finally died on August 5th 2010 in the Odessa Zoo.
Veterinarians made the post-mortem examination, which showed not only a reason of the death – the bad condition of the bird’s digestive system, but also that «Jeanne» had actually been a male. My mistake in determination of the bird’s sex had been made because of several reasons:
Visit please the community database of shared bird sounds from the whole world – xeno-canto. At the moment there are four different records of Short-toed Eagle calls in the search results for Circaetus gallicus. Every record has a description which includes author, date, time, country and also extended remarks. In addition places of the records are shown on a map.
This is short, but fresh news from GREFA. Old pair of Short-toed Eagles continues to breed in captivity this year in the GREFA Wild Fauna Recovery Centre. They do it regularly during several years, but there is no much information available about each breeding attempt yet.
This is the third time we bring to your attention GREFA and their successes in breeding and following release of Short-toed Eagles.
The second thing is an appearance of the Observado.org website as a global version of Waarneming.nl we told about before. Please take a look at the ‘About this species’ right column menu there.
Date: 30th April 2008
Time: 18:50
Species: Short-toed Eagle
Location: Jews Gate Bird Observatory, Gibraltar
Rings: Two colour rings on left leg, Green over Red
Details: The bird was migrating north, seen arriving over the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa, then being mobbed by the resident pair of Ravens and many Yellow-legged Gulls. The bird passed low overhead before continuing northwards into Spain.
I’m interested to know when and where the bird was ringed and any further information you can supply.
