Here's a video from one of the chatters Juanita, showing off Emoyeni's 2 eggs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ5iXE-AShY&feature=youtu.be

For some reason this post from 2 weeks or so ago never posted ..... so I am hitting "submit" again. Sheesh!!!

WooooHOOOOO!!! So glad to see we have a hatch .... Friday the 13th. Hope this is a lucky, only child, eaglet. Though being the first to hatch, it will have the better odds of survival.

Video from Priscillash of Em feeding http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-qkxOgXzSc&feature=youtu.be

I so wish this cam had sound. It would be awesome to hear Em calling out to Thulane on the video posted by Bunnie above.

Below is a partial clip from an interview with Rob Davies, Ornithologist, on Verreaux Eagles regarding cainism of the chicks. If anyone is interested in the entire interview (very interesting, what I have read so far), here is the link.

http://www.africanraptors.org/the-verrea...-dr-rob-davies/

12) Is the second born chick always killed or are there any known cases where two young fledged?

The Verreaux’s Eagles is one of a few raptor species that shows ‘obligate siblicide’ where, if two chicks hatch, the younger of the two almost always succumbs to starvation and bullying by the elder chick. Verreaux’s Eagles often lay two eggs and this offers them an insurance in case the first egg fails to hatch (a 21% likelihood in my study). I follow Rob Simmons’ argument that the adaptive significance of this strange biological phenomenon is that the young of these species need to be raised to become as strong as possible (offspring quality rather than quantity). I think this is especially important for Verreaux’s Eagles because I believe breeding opportunities for maturing eagles come about less often than in most other eagle populations on account of the stable prey base. The prey base of Golden Eagles for instance often shows a 30 fold variation in numbers compared to a 4 fold variation in hyrax and Golden Eagles can raise up to three young to take advantage of opportunities that arise in their world. On extremely rare occasions Verreaux’s Eagles have been recorded to raise two young from a single nesting attempt. I have heard of at least three such events from South Africa. In some of these instances, the chicks may have been sufficiently separated (on different parts of the nest or ledges) during the crucial stage when siblicide normally takes place.