Every birdwatcher has a list of sightings they dream about (if that sighting is accompanied by a National Geographic front-cover-worthy picture all the better). For the cognoscenti – sophisticated, proper twitchers – this list seems to feature rare, endangered or hard to spot critters, that may or may not be kind of boring to look at. But for the crass newbie like myself, bling is important. Flashy, that’s how I like my bucket list birds.
For a long time, a decent look at the gloriously multi-coloured (but annoyingly canopy dwelling) spotted pardelote was top of the list. A camping trip to the fabulous Wolgan Valley a couple of years back ticked that box. Worth sweating my way up a hill to look down on the magic of the diamond-bird.
Obviously rainbow bee eaters were on also on the list, until my parents moved to Bingara in on the northern slopes of NSW, a town where grey nomads and bird nerds duke it out for dominance in the local economy.
Since then, my top two have both been raptors. There’s the black shouldered kite with its glorious red eye and hauntingly regular presence along highways. I see it often on long road trips, hanging out near boggy pasture land, but getting a photograph seems to require a willingness to pull the hand brake on at high speed in the middle of a major road. I’m not saying I won’t do that, but I’m still working myself up to it. And then there’s the absurdly excellent Pacific Baza.
Stunning golden eye – tick. Dramatic black-and-white belly stripes – tick. Elegant flight, even acrobatic during the mating season – tick again.
And, absurdly, a crest – its nickname is the “crested hawk”. Does it get any better than that? I think not.
I was hugely excited when I spotted what I thought was a baza in our neck of the woods a few weeks ago – zipping past and disappearing into the leafy top of a liquidambar tree. Birds seem to be attracted by a pheromone released by amateur photographers who are not carrying a camera. Certainly that was the case on this occasion. Lacking any visual evidence of the encounter, I figured it was a wish fulfilment sighting. Probably one of the collared sparrowhawks, also stripy chested canopy dwellers.  They’ve been back on the scene at our place over the last month or two, hanging out in the top of the neighbour’s pine tree, bragging about their kills and having brief and frustratingly hard to photograph sexual encounters first thing in the morning.
But this week – a late Christmas present. My outstanding neighbours Laura and Steve texted to say that the mysterious bird they had previously seen lurking in a melaleuca tree had made at a guest appearance by another neighbour’s pool, and been IDed. It was a Pacific baza.
It’s a miracle that I didn’t get hit crossing the road as I raced over to their place.
The trip to casualty that could have ensued would have kept my from not just a single baza but a little family – a pair (I think) and a large and whiny fledged chick. Naturally, they were lurking in the very top of the tree, and of course, my skill-set with my flash new camera meant that my career as a natural history photographer is not going to take any great leaps forward.
Adult Pacific baza avoiding eye contact with a juvenile
Blurry as it is, I interpret the body language of the parent here as indicating an unwillingness to provide further snacks. We saw both adults make a few short flights, and at least once definitely offer the youngster some prey. The juvenile whined without interruption, inching along the branch towards the adults, ducking its head and restively half-opening its wings. This parent avoided eye contact and eventually flapped off to a separate spot in the tree.  A couple of weeks after they leave the nest, apparently, juvenile bazas stop getting food provided by their parents, so I guess this was what was playing out here. Baby Baza was certainly less than happy.
Juvenile baza (I think) in a huff
To say I was ecstatic to see the family of bazas within 100 metres of my front door would be to underestimate my degree of excitement. But then a troubling thought struck me… would the presence of the bazas harsh the buzz of the sparrowhawk pair that I’d seen canoodling on my side of the street? The pair appeared soon after a fierce storm that tore some big branches in our backyard and might well have trashed a nest somewhere down the road. Would the appearance of the bazas spoil the chance of a late-breaking bit of nest building?
Like Pacific bazas, sparrowhawks spend a lot of time in the treetops. They’re ambush hunters, lurking in amongst the leaves ready to burst out and pluck small birds from the sky.
They’ll take sparrows (perhaps unsurprisingly), mynahs and miners, mudlarks and wattlebirds, even birds as big as crested pigeons or crimson rosellas. Here’s a pic I took recently of a sparrowhawk trying to choke down the remnants of a leg of a bird. See the toes poking out of its beak? I watched it pacing up and down on the branch, wiping its beak repeatedly and generally looking a bit agitated. I note that the left over leg remained untouched and I can kind of understand why.
Maybe its not surprising after this kind of experience that a sparrowhawk might want to ring the changes, diet wise. And in fact, sparrowhawks won’t say no to a bug or two. A Canberra study found half of sparrowhawks’ prey, by the numbers, were snails, spiders or insects, with Christmas beetles and cicadas a particular feature. All those insects weren’t too filling – they made up only 2% of the biomass. But still, that interest in insects could them into competition with bazas, which eat fruit, frogs, lizards and snakes, grabbed from the foliage at the tops of trees, but especially like stick insects.
Yet another thing to inspire delight in bazas – an eccentric specialist diet. When I was looking at this critter in the Berowra train station, I wasn’t thinking “if only I ripped that to bits it would make a toothsome snack for my children”. But if I was a baza, I would have been.
However, larger insects are a favourite of Pacific bazas, while sparrowhawks seem to go for nothing bigger than a huntsman or a cicada.
Disappointingly, the bazas have disappeared from the paperbark in Steve and Laura’s drive, for all its proximity to a refreshing backyard pool and ample opportunities for hunting in the tops of tall trees, undisturbed by competition for their favourite phasmids. They’ll probably be nearby – these raptors aren’t migratory and Berowra sounds pretty close to their ideal habitat:
tropical and sub-tropical forests and woodlands, largely within 300km of the coast. In the breeding season they frequent tree-lined watercourses, rainforest, sclerophyll forest and tall woodland, but range widely following nesting to lower ground, when they may visit urban parks and gardens.
One birdwatcher in Queensland followed the reproductive fortunes of a pair of bazas as they nested in a series of different trees within a couple of hundred metres of his house on his property for a decade.  So, no National Geographic cover photo as yet but I remain hopeful. 2020 really was a dud year but with the crested hawk in town, who knows what fine things could be in store for us in our backyard next year.
Raptor encounters in our neighbourhood
Sex, nests and dogfighting – sparrowhawks set up house in our local pinetrees
Sparrowhawk sibling rivalry – baby serial killers learn to hunt
An eagle in suburbia – a wedgetail on Berowra Creek
The very big fish – sea eagle vs mulloway
References