Nightshadows"

„Nightshadow“

Class: Ares
Order: Falconiformes
Family: Accipitridae
Genus: Harpia
Species: Harpia umbra

Related Species: Harpia argenta, Harpia aurea, Harpia blanca…

Born completely white, the feathers of nightshadows become darker with every year. Adults have different shadings of dark grey and black. Their eyes change from dark colours by birth to different shadings of gold in youth and finally become silver. Very old harpies have light silver or nearly white eyes. Normally with three years the markings on legs (thin wave-lines), wings and (bands on the underside) tail (three bands) appears. The male ones have a double-crest with short wide feathers, female have two long pointed feathers which grow a whole live. The oldest documented female nightshadows crest-feathers reached the ground when standing upright; she was 53 years old.

Nightshadows live in familiar groups of five up to 15 members. Young male leave the family at the age of three years, female at five. When shadows find a partner they stay together their whole life. They breed every two or three years, it depends on the number of prey living in the area around the so called “home-tree” with the aerie. Most times there are two eggs in the nest, only in years with a high number of preys there can be more.

Most young ones do their first flight with 1 ½ years, till this time the wings are too small to bear their weight. They only can climb and jump through the crow of their home-tree. From the day they learn to fly young shadows follow their parents or older sisters and brothers which show them which animals and fruits they can eat and which one should be untouched. When they are strong enough, the older ones show the youth how to hunt for chirrocs (lemurs), daccas (small deers) and other.

The only predator of nightshadow is the seforra, a giant snake with a length of 15 m. She has feathers at the head and at the tip of her tail and a wave-line mark along the spine (which looks similar to the one of her prey).

About the picture:

It´s a combination of ball-pen drawing and computer-coloration (eyes, hand, feet, beak, background). “White Shadow” is the name of the harpy in foreground; he is an albino-nightshadow. The flying one is an adult female and the third is a young male.

The original size of the picture is 30x41 cm. I work over three weeks on it, but it isn´t already finished, the background is still missing…a winter forest landscape.