Burn-off sunset.

Yet more lock-down luck.  Company, space, a rambling garden desperately requiring attention, three national parks in walking distance and enough devices to make home learning while working full time quasi-feasible – I already have plenty to be grateful for.  And now, the collared sparrowhawks are back, getting friendly in the neighbour’s pine tree.  They have perfect timing.  It’s just at that point in the lockdown – eight weeks in – when even the most avid homebody/hoarder is running out of distractions.  I’m not saying that trying to get a photograph of the local raptors having sex is my only reason to get out of bed in the morning, but it is a reason.

Sparrowhawk in profile

Morning does seem to be the time for it.  No pictures – this is a family-friendly blog, after all (nothing to do with me being slow on the draw with the zoom lens).  When the sparrowhawks are around, we usually hear them soon after sunrise.  There’s relentless calling from near the top of a tree – mostly, I think from the female.  The male perches, in a diffident kind of way, in a nearby branch.  Then they’re at it, with a brief distinctive flurry of calls.  Afterward, the male shuffles or flaps a distance away on the branch, studiously avoiding eye contact.

Sparrowhawk demanding attention

The one time I managed to watch the process from go to whoa, afterwards the female chilled out in more or less the same spot high in the pine tree, catching the morning rays, and keeping an eye out for small bird snacks.

Meanwhile, what I think was the male (though this might be a gender stereotype), started attempting some DIY.  Collared sparrowhawks build a shallow nest of stick, high in the canopy, and line it with fresh leaves each year.   This pair seem to be using the same spot in the very top of the neighbour’s tree, notable for its inconvenient lack of a line of sight from my place.

Watching the male gathering construction materials, I’m once again reminded of the limitations of the sparrowhawk’s modest beak and  delicate legs for this kind of building work.  The bird seemed to spend a lot of time eyeing up flimsy looking twigs and then flailing around with its wings in an attempt, mostly unsuccessful, to break some bits off.

Sparrowhawk with wings out on a delicate branch

Sparrowhawk in profile in the dead branches of a pine tree

As you can see, this bird had a red-hot go at getting some twigs from dead branches on one of the usual pine trees.  Eventually, however, the nest-building one of the pair got a bit experimental.  The liquidambar in our front yard – stripped of its leaves by winter, and not so good for ambush hunting – got a visit, solely for construction purposes.

Sparrowhawk trying to grab some twigs for the nest

However, some of the neighbour’s shrubs with thin whippy stems and fine needle-like leaves and seemed to be nest-material of choice.

The bush of choice for sparrowhawks but not bird photographers

Even so, the process was neither dignified nor ubiquitously successful.  These photographs are both fails.  Photographic fail – frustrated nest builders crashing around in the shrubbery are not an easy capture.  Also, nest building fail – neither of these twigs made it back to home base.  I did, however, see more success on another round of visits to this same bit of greenery the next day.

Failure to launch with this one

Reaching down for a twig

And they’ve kept at it, with occasional success.

Sparrowhawk with stick

Sparrowhawk taking off with nestbuilding materials

Watching the nest-reno in action has made me reflect on our luck in having these gorgeous critters hanging out nearby – and  on what kinds of habitat create that kind of luck.  Sparrowhawks need tall trees to nest in. This pair (assuming it’s the same one returning each year) nest in one pine tree, and use a sequence of three others nearby as regular hunting spots.  Thanks to lots of greenery, we have loads of undemanding smallish birds on the premises of the right size for raptor snacks – little and red wattlebirds, chicks of the ubiquitous brush turkeys and, of course, loads of bloody noisy miners.

Little wattlebird facing off with a kookaburra

Red wattlebird in autumn leaves

I’ve definitely seen the sparrowhawks devouring birds that we don’t see at our place though – I’m sure they hunt in the national park that’s 500 metres down the hill.  Here’s one of the fledglings from a couple of years ago, chowing down on what I think is a white cheeked honeyeater – I’ve never seen one at our place, but they’re pretty common in the bush not far away.

Juvenile sparrowhawk protecting its prey

Fledglings eating a new holland honeyeater

In the two seasons when they successfully raised chicks, the fledglings seemed to practice short hop flights from one pine to another.  The liquidambar in our yard is an occasionally hunting spot in summer, and I do wonder if the cicadas that appear to feed on its sap in mid-summer offer useful meals for the chicks.

And then there’s the necessity for nest-lining trees with appropriately flimsy branches.

Sparrowhawks are generalists and live all over the place – everywhere except the most arid regions of Australia.  So they’re obviously not too fussy about the finer details of their immediate environment.   They’re pretty low key around people and don’t seem to mind suburbia.  I wonder how much they need the bushland I’m finding so sustaining in lock-down.

The sparrowhawk pair isn’t the only birds aware of the value of this bit of floristic real estate, though.  I’m pretty sure currawongs took some of the sparrowhawk’s nestlings in previous clutches, and I wonder whether the presence of these smart and social predators has kept the pair away for the last three years.  But yesterday a bit of argy-bargy with another of the locals – a family of kookaburras.  I’ve been seeing them around a bit more than usual this winter, surveying the scene from our dawn redwood and the remnants of our long-dead pine trees.

Yesterday I wandered up the drive to see if I could capture any trysts or DIY activity, and there was a cheeky kookaburra in the exact  spot I saw the sparrowhawk chilling in the day before.  And another, on a second favoured hunting perch, further up the tree.  The sparrowhawks were in the vicinity, but as soon as one landed in that pine, the kookas were after it.

Here’s a deeply discombobulated sparrowhawk, catching its breath a few metres away.  A minute later, the kookaburras were back and the pair of raptors hightailed it into the distance.

Sparrowhawk recouping after being chased by a kookaburra

I feel stupidly anxious about this, for some reason.  Every year about this time, we hear the sparrowhawks and I’m always hoping they’ll hang around and try to raise some chicks again.  For the last couple of seasons we’ve been disappointed.  But this year, silly as it seems, it feels a bit more high-stakes, and not just because we’re stuck at home with near-infinite opportunities for bird watching.  It feels symbolic even.  If this avian couple’s romance and nestbuilding comes to fruition, somehow it signifies that my little family will stay safe here too, safe and sane and together.  And if not… these things somehow seem less assured.

But of course, that’s a nonsense.  Birdwatcher magical thinking.  If the sparrowhawks find a better place to nest, and our trees get a different set of inhabitants, there’ll still be things to do, birds to listen out for, a different family to get to know.

Kookaburra family resemblances

The previous adventures of our local sparrowhawks

Sex, nests and dogfighting

Collared sparrowhawks vs Pacific bazas

Motherhood on a windy day – the sparrowhawk chick grows up

Death and sibling rivalry

Sparrowhawk summer

Battle of the baby birds

Welcome beautiful stranger