SMAP 217 - Headless Eagle

Hello everyone. It's been a while but I'm back for Round 217 of the Show Me A Photo or SMAP Contest hosted by @nelinoeva. The link to the contest is provided at the end of this post.

The theme for this week is:

HEADLESS CHICKEN

A couple of months ago my daughter had the opportunity to visit the Philippine Eagle Center located here in our city, Davao City. I was not able to accompany her group but she promised to send me some photos of real live Philippine Eagles. In case you don't know, the Philippine Eagle is the national bird of our country. It is an endangered specie and there are less than about 400 of them left in the country. Illegal hunting and destruction of their habitat due to illegal logging and migrant human settlements engaging in slash and burn activities have led to their gradual decimation.

The Philippine Eagle Center was established to address these problems. It is a privately funded Center aimed at preserving this endangered specie. They provide captive eagles an environment where they can naturally breed but also do artificial insemination on female eagles that refuse to mate. There have been, so far, about 30 successful hatchlings since the inception of the Center.

I have always featured the Philippine Eagle in the SMAP Contest but none that had photos of the actual creature. Now, I have and am so excited to share photos of them now and in future Rounds, depending on the theme for the week. So for this Round Headless here's an eagle called Xebi, hatched in November 2024 and named after one of the Center's sponsors, Ibex Philippines, an international outsourcing company. Here is Headless Xebi.

This is a crop of the photo below.

And how Xebi and cage looks like from the visitor's vantage point.

That's all for now. I look forward to sharing more photos of the different Eagles in the Center, including Viggo, the model for the 1,000 peso bill minted by the Philippine Central Bank.

The first photo is my entry to this Round.

The link to the contest post is here.

All for now and till next time. Stay safe and a blessed Sunday to all.