Dear All,

Find attached an image of a Snake Eagle which I photographed close to
Naibor Camp (central Masai Mara) earlier today (with a detailed crop
for the bird detectives!)

At the time, I was confident that despite the obvious barring on the
lower breast/ belly the bird was a Black-chested Snake Eagle, a bird
moulting from immature to adult plumage, based on the orange tones in
some of the barring on the lower breast/ belly area and also the
underwing. I had photographed a similar bird in Mikumi NP, Tanzania, a
few years back which Brian Small helped me to identify, although that
bird was far paler and had far less heavy-barring underneath than this
one. After showing my wife Vicki the Snake Eagle plate in Fanshawe and
Stevenson, she questioned why today’s bird could not in fact be a
Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle in the same stage of transition? A very good
question that I’m hoping someone in the group could answer better than
I? I could only point to the lack of barring around the vent as the
clincher but maybe there is sufficient variation in Beaudouin’s to
warrant closer inspection of the images?

Beaudouin’s Snake Eagle is a vagrant to Kenya from north-western
Africa while Black-chested is a reasonably common resident, especially
in the Mara, so the odds are stacked firmly in the latter’s favour -
although this is never reason enough to be complacent with
identification. It also raises the question as to whether birds
exhibiting identical plumage to today’s bird could have been
mis-identified as Beaudouin’s in Kenya in the past?

Anyway, it’s certainly an interesting bird and one which I hope will
have you dashing to your bird books!

Happy birding,

Adam Scott Kennedy
Naibor Camp, Masai Mara
www.naibor.com