Makatsa and Thulane are officially parents
Makatsa and Thulane's egg has finally hatched, right around the time predicted.
The Black Eagles’ incubation period has officially come to an end, thanks to the announcement of the hatching of Makatsa and Thulane’s egg this week.
The pair of eagles were faced with the possibility of having their mating season postponed after their nest had been washed away by heavy rains earlier in the year. However, Makatsa and Thulane refused to let this setback hinder their mating plans as they began working hard on a new nest.
The new nest was completed rather quickly, after only a couple of weeks of rebuilding.
The hard work put into getting the nest done in time for the mating season was not in vain, as it was officially announced in May that their first egg had been laid. This meant that Makatsa was set to spend 44 days on the nest incubating the egg, with the team from the Black Eagle Project Roodekrans (BEPR) predicting a mid-June hatching time for the egg.
Also Read: Makatsa has laid her first egg for this season
Over the course of the incubation period, Makatsa spent the majority of her time on the nest caring for the egg, while Thulane was flying solo. Thulane did however also spend his fair share of time in the nest incubating the egg, granting Makatsa the opportunity to stretch her wings every now and then.
The BEPR team’s predictions proved to be spot-on when they obtained photographic evidence of the hatching of the egg on the morning of Monday, 18 June. The photo, along with their observations of the nest, leads the team to believe the egg hatched some time on Sunday afternoon.
Sadly, the photo was taken from such a distance that the new eagle chick can’t be seen clearly enough to publish its picture, but we can reassure you that once the eagle is large enough to be seen from a distance through a camera lens, you’ll see it.
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