Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day Fourteen: Philippine Eagle

Photo Source: eBird.com

 

Today's prompt bird, the Philippine Eagle, is one of the most endangered and rarest birds of prey. It has some other names, too, like the King of Birds and the Monkey-eating Eagle. But the thing I enjoyed most when learning about this bird was watching the Philippine Eagles' parenting (see the video below for amazing National Geographic footage). This species produces one egg every two years and both parents are intensely involved in the care and feeding of the chick. They provide a constant stream of snacks like bats, pigs, lemurs, and other delicacies. The baby starts leaving the nest at about five months, but childhood isn't over yet, as the parents keep a close watch, and continue feeding duties, for eighteen more months. The adolescent practices flying, bouncing up and down impressively before taking off. Many parallels with human parenting came to mind, but perhaps the one that made me smile most was the chick tossing back his head so that his crest, a slightly smaller version of the one on his parents' heads, falls into a perfectly coiffed mane. It reminded me of my son saying, at around nine, "It's taken me years to get my hair this way." And of course, when I write in my poem (below) about the full nest, the empty nest is never far from my thoughts.

Eagle Junior fills the nest,

eating snacks he likes the best

served up by his dad and mom:

lemurs, lizards, it's the bomb.

He's the center of their lives,

and they make sure he survives

while he practices his flight

all day long, and sleeps at night,

while he tends his growing mane

and works his muscles and his brain.

Eagle Junior's loved the best

And his presence fills the nest. 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

Here are some more sites I used for background reading: Edge of Existence, Philippine Eagle Foundation, and Rappler.com.

More birds I wrote about this week: Conure (Carolina Parakeet), Razorbill, Pileated Woodpecker, Saffron Finch, Black Drongo, and Turtle-Dove. And there are links to last week's birds in this post.

Matt Forrest Essenwine has this week's roundup.