The guinea fowl were jabbering away so loudly it was obvious there was a predator around. There was a flurry of movement 100 metres away in the long grass, so I went in for a closer look.
An immature martial eagle, largest eagle in Africa, rose out of the grass and settled atop an acacia tree watching...waiting.
To my surprise, below the tree there crouched a scrub hare, frozen in full view of the eagle.
Both seemed to realize that gravity couldn’t get the eagle down to the hare faster than the hare could have legged it away from there, so a one and a half hour stand-off ensued.
Eventually the hare made a break for it, bolting at top speed across the open grassland.
... but the hare turned a one-eighty and zoomed a beeline straight back toward the vehicle, turning to avoid it at the last second.
Huge and built for power, able to take prey the size of small antelope, the eagle could not match the hare’s quick manoeuvres. It returned to altitude and soared away as the hare bounded to safety back into the long grass.
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