Philippine eagle and its eaglet's feeding habits studied in the wilds of Sitio Mamaon, Toril, Davao City [Philippines]

The Philippine eagle, Pithecophaga jefferyi Ogilvie-Grant is the country's national bird. According to a report, it is the most distinct, impressive and rarest species. The Philippine eagle is well adapted to and inhabits tropical rainforests where foliage is dense. However, Philippines rainforest are rapidly disappearing, putting the eagles in peril. To know more of the Philippine eagle and its food habits, Sulapas et al. (UP-Min) conducted a study specifically to 1) identify and quantify preys of the Philippine eagles in the wild; 2) describe food habits of a pair of Philippine eagles and its eaglet in the nest; 3) determine prey delivery rate of the parents to the eaglet; 4) quantify the diversity of organisms in the area in terms of diversity and evenness of prey items of the eagles using Shannon's index of diversity. The study was conducted in one of the oldest known nesting sites in Sitio Mamaon, Barangay Sibulan, Toril, Davao City, on agricultural and residential areas. Direct visual observations was conducted from May 5, 2006 until the young left the nest on August 10, 2006. Results of the study revealed the following: Feeding behavior of the eaglet showed two separate types of eating habit. These were dependent-teaching eating (DTE) and independent-learning-eating (ILE). Both gradually developed into fully-independent learning-eating (FILE) habit. There were 73 identified prey items eaten by the Philippine eagle. Five of these were not clearly ascertained. Flying lemur (Cynocephalus volans) was the most numerous prey item which comprised about 27.94% of the total diet. 'Coleto' (Sarcops calvus) was the least frequent type of prey which comprised 1.47%. The pair of Philippine eagles also delivered domestic animals such as dogs (Canis familiaris), cat (Felis catus) and chicken (Gallus domesticus) to their young. These comprised 4.41%, 2.94%, and 10.91%, respectively. This study made the first recorded occurrence of domestic animals on the diet of the Philippine eagle. In most cases, the diet of the eagle pair with their natural preys were unavailable and may be hiding due to inclement weather conditions. Prey delivery rate was 0.75% suggesting that there is 1 prey/day. The male parent delivered 46.30% of the prey to the nesting territory while the female parent delivered 53.70%. The computed Shannon's index to assess the diversity of the location of the nesting site revealed H = 2.27 and an evenness = 0.53. Results showed that there was no perfect even distribution of abundances of each species and that diversity in the area was not that high. This can be due to a high occurrence of flying lemurs (26.03%) in the overall diet which contributed to the uneven distribution of species.