Part of our tour through the Kilim Geoforest Park in Langkawi was an Eagle Feeding. While I absolutely recommend a tour in the park in general, I have conflicting opinions about the Eagle Feeding part.
Eagles are wild animals; we visited them in their natural habitat, not in a zoo. The way the feeding worked was that the tour guide would have a small bucket of food and throws it into the water. Thankfully, only the guide did this; the tour participants had not been allowed to throw food. Seeing the food, many eagles started circling and “hunting” the prey. We could witness this for about 2 minutes.
So far, so good, and it was beautiful to watch, as it was something new for me. I had second thoughts when I saw – 5 minutes after us – the next boat doing the same thing. If the eagles get fed every few minutes, they become more like zoo animals – despite being in their natural habitat.
Anyways, when we continued our tour, I noticed something. The eagles that circled our tour boat all had been relatively small and with a red-brown taint. Now, in the trees, I saw two way larger representatives of the species. Upon notice, our guide pointed out that these are White Bellied Sea Eagles.
A White-Bellied Sea Eagle grows up to 85cm in height and has a wingspan of up to 220cm. These two just observed the spectacle from the sidelines but did not participate. Only the much smaller Brahminy Kites took the bites that our guide threw into the water.
