Familial Feelings - The Small World Of The Snake Eagle

Ensconced in the trees is the world of the raptors. The author takes us on an exciting journey on the wings of the snake eagle.

- Gobind Sagar Bharadwaj

Family is the basic unit of any society in the civilized world and a reflection of its culture and customs; often a better guide than any literature on the same. Similarly, in the animal kingdom, the easiest way to delve into the enigmatic world of a species is to observe them as they start a family. That has been my experience while observing a nest of the short-toed snake eagle.

Two raptors were soaring high in the sky. Suddenly, one of them dived down and vanished behind the canopy of the dry forest. The zoom lens of my camera had already revealed their identity -- a pair of short-toed snake eagles, Circaetus gallicus. My first sighting of these raptors was in Pratapgarh, Rajasthan. This area is a plateau of the Jhantala forest block with degraded vegetation and it was near the Kamata temple that I sighted them hovering in the sky, perhaps foraging for their quarry. The sun was sinking but I was successful in taking pictures of these raptors. But my luck had more surprises for me! As we were descending the plateau, I noticed a large nest on the top of a medium sized Salar tree, Boswellia serrata. We stopped there. The nest tree was around 180-200 meters away from the road with the nest at a height of about 5-6 m above the ground. It was made of dry twigs and measured around 70-90 cm in diameter. After around five minutes, one short-toed snake eagle came and perched on a branch extending just above the nest, while another made its way to the other Salar tree just 50 meters away from the nest tree. So, this was a nesting pair, which after foraging had returned to their egg or chick; I could not guess. It was almost dark so I could not continue my observation, but I promised to return.