Ruth Tingay joined The Peregrine Fund's project in Madagascar in 1999 to study and understand the unusual breeding behavior we found in Madagascar Fish Eagles. Through this research she completed her Master's degree and has gone on to her Ph.D., both through Nottingham University, United Kingdom. Ruth's focus and tenacity, and ability to turn adversity into "adventure," are great characteristics for any field biologist!

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There was more evidence of heavy deforestation up the western side of the peninsula so it was no real surprise not to find any fish eagles there. We reached a mangrove-lined inlet halfway up the coast (called Ambariomena) and decided to investigate further. Sparkling waters lapped against tiny orange-coloured sand beaches, back dropped by the remnants of the forested hills above us. It looked like ideal fish eagle habitat but three hours of scrutinising later and we’d found nothing. A couple of local fishermen paddled by in their dugout canoes and told us they’d seen fish eagles here before but didn’t know where the nest was. They invited us to stay in their village overnight and we followed them back to shore. I was relieved to see their village consisted of only 11 huts, all built on stilts at the top of the beach. I was tired and still feeling unwell and wasn’t really in the mood for being swamped by hoards of curious villagers.

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‘The best laid plans of mice and men
Oft go wrong and leave us nothing
But grief and pain’.

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As the season progressed, so the temperatures soared. By 7 am I would be soaked to the skin in sweat, trying to dodge the 35°C heat by rigging up makeshift shades of t-shirts and towels at the observation site. Our female fledgling was still keeping close to the nest tree, although the four attending adults had stopped delivering fish to the nest and were taking it directly to the eaglet instead. She was very vocal for much of the time and made sure her parents knew when she was hungry, which seemed to be constantly. We hadn’t seen her fly further than 200 metres from the nest tree and most of her time was spent lurking in dense foliage, only giving her position away by the frequent food begging call.

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March 3, 2000

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By the beginning of September, three of my four nests had failed and so I was concentrating all behavioural observations on the remaining nest, #2 on Lake Soamalipo . This nest had one nestling, which was due to fledge in early October and was carefully tended by three males and one female. The nestling was about 60 days old by now, so still had another 20-odd days before it was ready to leave the nest, but it was large enough for me to see it from my observation point. By now Loukman and I had managed to trap 15 eagles in total and we only had a couple more to get before completing the set, including the young eaglet in the nest, which I wanted to band and collect blood from so I could work out who the true father was out of the potential three males.

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In early August there was a pleasant surprise waiting for me when I came back to camp one evening. The truck had arrived from Tana and had brought an American vet-med student, Renee Land. In turn, Renee had brought my mail from Tana! I didn’t know what to do first—read my mail from home or talk to someone who could understand my language! I did both, much to the amusement of the technicians, who hadn’t heard me speaking so quickly and so much for two months!

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I fell in love with Madagascar long before I ever got there. I’d seen pictures of dancing lemurs, upside-down trees, and giant jumping rats and had heard many a tale of exciting discoveries and adventures in this strange and forgotten world, not least the re-discovery of the Madagascar Serpent Eagle by Peregrine Fund biologists. I wasn’t disappointed when I finally got there myself. My chance came when Rick Watson asked whether I would be interested in studying the critically endangered Madagascar Fish Eagle for my Master’s thesis. He only had to ask once!

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Five a.m. on Lake Ankerika on the west coast of Madagascar. This lake is famous from local lore as home to the most ferocious Nile Crocodiles, purported to frequently snatch innocent bystanders from its shores. Of all three lakes in the surrounding three-lake complex, Lake Ankerika is more interesting to raptor ecologists because it supports five territories of the Madagascar Fish-Eagle, which is not only endangered, but also has a polyandrous breeding system. [A polyandrous system is when one female is mated to more than one male.]

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Madagascar, located off the southeast coast of Africa, is the fourth largest island in the world, measuring almost 1,000 miles north to south. It is widely considered among the top ten wildlife conservation priorities in the world because of the high diversity of species that exist only on the island and the very high rates of habitat loss due to human disturbance. Scientists believe that humans arrived on Madagascar from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago, and since their arrival may have contributed to the extinction of most of Madagascar's large animals, including the elephant bird, the largest bird to ever walk on earth, a pygmy hippopotamus, and at least 14 lemur species.

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