Raptors in RESIDENCE

The crowned eagles of the African rainforest don’t mind life among people. In Durban, South Africa, these raptors can be watched right from the living room.

- Christine Sonvilla

Cowies Hill nestles in the suburbs of Durban, South Africa. Alongside spacious family homes are supermarkets, shops and schools, all bisected by busy roads. If Shane McPherson, a scientist from the University of KwaZuluNatal, wants to check on his charges, this is the unlikely but perfect place.

Shane parks outside a house and walks down the garden path to a sturdy eucalyptus tree. This is an ideal nest-site, not for a ‘birdie’ but for a fully-grown raptor perfectly at ease in the vicinity of people’s homes: the crowned eagle.

Named for the distinct plumage adorning its head, the crowned eagle inhabits the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa, and is also found along the east coast from Tanzania to South Africa. It’s a large but shrinking kingdom, where once-pristine forests of mahogany, Macaranga and African yellow-wood have been increasingly replaced by lucrative timber and sugar cane plantations. According to the IUCN – which lists crowned eagles as Near Threatened – between 5,000 and 50,000 adults exist across Africa today. But Shane believes the IUCN underestimates the severity of the situation: with habitat degradation continuing apace, the raptor could be in a far more threatened state than the figures suggest.

In the city