USUALLY people do not take notice when they see numbers of large birds intently feeding on the ground, especially during summer.

They are feeding on harvester termites, a main food source. It is easier to list species that do not eat termites than those who do. But often the day after heavy rain ants and termites develop wings and the air is filled with swarms of large flying morsels of protein and fat, which birds cannot resist.

The latest was over the Welgemoed Pan on 14 December, clouds of flying ants were blown down from Galileo Street and it was like a scene from Hitchcock’s horror film, Birds. The first to find these were screeching common starlings (Europese spreeu) quickly followed by blacksmith lapwings (bontkiewiet). The noise stirred the Hartlaub’s gulls (Hartlaubse meeu) whose activity soon drove off the smaller birds. The gulls fed by stopping in flight and throwing back their heads catching flying ants as they passed over their heads. Then, 20 yellow-billed kites (geelbekwou) joined in, gliding amongst the swarm and with a twitch caught flying ants in their feet and passing them to their mouths.

A black-headed heron (swartkopreier) tried to pick flying ants out of the air, but in vain because it is not an agile flyer, and left. African sacred ibises (skoorsteenveer) were able to pick flying ants out of the air being much more manoeuvrable. Strangely there were no hadeda ibises (hadeda) present.

However, above all these birds was a circling Verreaux’s eagle (witkruisarend). It was too high to see exactly what it was doing, but it was twitching like the yellow-billed kites and presumably catching flying ants in its feet, when suddenly it commenced a stoop (where raptors dive down closing their wings to gain maximum speed) and a kill was expected, but no, when it had dived through the feeding birds it pulled up and started to circle again, feeding on flying ants. The n the swarm and the birds moved off out of sight.

Research has revealed that a lady once witnessed 100 000 Steppe eagles in the Okavango feeding on flying ants, also a WCBC member once had a similar sighting in the Northern Kruger Park.

An old research paper dating back to 1972 and Occasional Papers of the National Museums Rhodesia, referred to in the Birds of Prey book written by Peter Steyn state that it was calculated that large termites contain 560 calories per 100g and are the diet used to build up fat for the journey to Russia.

It was also calculated that each bird would need to eat 1 600 to 2 200 termites in three hours per day.