African Fish Eagle

Haliaeetus vocifer

The African Fish Eagle is well named 'vocifer', since it has a habit of throwing its white head back dramatically and calling loudly - often in duet, and sometimes for quite a while. It's one of the defining sounds of Africa.

At Lake Baringo, some of the bird guides like to take out some fish, then whistle the Fish Eagles down so that you can have a closer look at them, and try your reactions photographing them.
My reactions weren't that good: although the composition here doesn't look too bad, it's cropped from a 35mm slide: this is the extreme left hand side of the original picture: I almost missed the shot altogether!

The African Fish Eagle is particularly common on the Rift Valley Lakes and around Lake Victoria.