Birds of Prey

Our first weekend field trip was on Saturday, January 30. It was a four-part trip. First, we went to a Birds of Prey sanctuary. Second, we went to a lion park. Third, we drove through downtown Pietermaritzburg and stopped at the train station. Then, on our way back to AE, we drove to the top of a hill and stopped at a beautiful lookout where we could see all of Pietermaritzburg and the surrounding area. It was a long, exciting day! Right now, though, I'm just going to talk about the birds.

The Birds of Prey Sanctuary houses about 50 different species of vicious birds. (South Africa has over 80 species of birds of prey total!) Most of them have been injured in the wild and are simply recovering at the sanctuary.

We got to walk around the grounds and look at all the birds for a while. There were owls, hawks, falcons, eagles, storks, and vultures, just to name a few.




After walking around, there was a show for us to watch. They brought out 5 different birds and let them fly around in front of us. The lady running the show was really funny and told us a lot of interesting information about each type of bird. She demonstrated some of them catching food in the air, and one bird walked around by our feet and found food that had been hidden between people's shoes! It was quite interesting.





We then ate our packed lunches at some picnic tables, and afterwards, we watched the vultures eat their lunch. It was a crazy thing to watch!

The vultures were so mean and picked on each other. They kept nipping at each other's necks while waiting for the food. One even flipped another over on its back by the neck! It was so crazy!


When the food finally did come, they all fought over each other's pieces and played tug of war with every piece until all the food was gone. Then they were perfectly civil with each other since they weren't hungry any more. I had never seen anything like it before.

After watching the vultures, we packed up and headed off to our next adventure, the lion park!

Phrase of the day: "Ubani igama lahko?" (oo-bon-ee ee-gah-ma lock-o) means "What is your name?"