Part Two of the blog on a short visit to the Kgalagadi covers the second full day in the park – also our second full day and last day staying at Twee Rivieren.  We had such a good drive on the previous day, that we decided to again drive to the Melkvlei picnic site and return to Twee Rivieren.

Strangely, the raptors were not as abundant as that covered in part one.   We did see a few Tawny Eagles, Greater Kestrels, Black-winged Kites, Falcons and Pale Chanting Goshawks, but nowhere near the number that we had seen the day before.

However, we were treated to a fantastic show by another raptor – a Secretarybird.  The Secretarybird is a raptor, but uniquely is the only raptor that exclusively hunts and catches its prey on the ground.  All other raptors hunt and catch their prey in the air as well as on the ground.  As we were driving just past the  the Rooiputs waterhole we observed a solitary Secretarybird walking in the grass. We had seen some the previous day, but not as clearly as this one.  It was some 25 to 30 metres away.

Secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius).

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Northern Cape Province, South Africa.

All the following images were captured with a Canon EOS R5 Mark II camera body with battery grip and a Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens and a Canon RF 1.4x extender. Effective focal length 560mm. Most of the images were shot with the rig handheld.

The exposure settings were: ISO 800. Aperture 6.3 or 5.6. Shutter speed 1/3200 sec. or 1/2500 sec.  Electronic shutter.  Exposure set manually.  Many of the images were extracted from sequences captured at 30 frames per second.  The performance time up to the last image shown here when the bird walked away was 5 minutes and 13 seconds, during which time 1254 images were captured!

The above image was taken as we first observed it walking. It then stopped and started to strike the ground with its feet as is its normal hunting habit. You can just see the mole run through the grass where it is striking.

It then gets excited and opens its wings and start to jump into the air.  This is again one of its hallmark habits when hunting.

It then starts to strike the ground again very forcibly and catches a mole, within the mole run, in its claws.  You can see the small object in its claw in the image below. I could identify the prey as a mole, with difficulty, in some latter pictures.

It then takes the mole in its beak and the action starts.

The bird starts to jump high into the air followed by somersaults and rolls whilst it flings the prey (obviously now well dead) into the air.  Seemed just like a game. It was amazing.

After doing these manoeuvers a number of times which involved jumping, turning in the air, flinging its prey about, picking it up again and repeating the process once more, it finally picked up what remained of the mole and started to walk with it in its beak.  Seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Finally after some time, it stopped and started to swallow the mole

….. and then proudly walked off.

It was a memorable few minutes – I guess not experienced that often.  I know that they do jump up into the air as a part of mating display behaviour as well as flying quite high up into the sky and then swooping down performing undulating displays. But this seemed quite different and also that we could not observe another Secretarybird in the proximity of this one.

Nothing much else came close to the excitement of this. We did later see a Leopard but is was quite far away, walking on top of a dune and then disappearing into the long grass.  A day not be to forgotten.

Part One of the blog

Part Three of the blog

Part Four of the blog