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mccnmatt

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January 2, 2022

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breeding, mating, Native birds, nesting, raptors

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When too much (raptor) sex is barely enough

Collared sparrowhawk perched in a liquidambar tree

Sparrowhawk lurking in the liquidambar

Over the last couple of months I’ve upped my bird nerd quotient a notch. Having already distressed my teenagers by revealing that the jolly bird calls they were hearing each morning were the sounds of our resident raptors in flagrante, I have taken my prurient interest in the intimate lives of avians one step further. At last I have some good pictures of sparrowhawk sex. If you don’t want to see them, look away now.

Sparrowhawk sex

It’s chatty

In my defense, our resident pair were at it relentlessly for three months. When I say relentlessly, I mean at least four or five times a day. Not so much morning noon and night, more early morning, morning, morning, morning and occasionally late afternoon. It was hard to ignore, although I found my colleagues less intrigued than I expected when I drew their attention to the ambient sounds of bird sex in the middle of zoom meetings.

Because I’m a worrier, even before living through a pandemic, hearing avian coupling for month after month ended up making me feel quite anxious about the reproductive systems of our pair. Why so much sex? One of my Gen X pals suggested drily that perhaps they were very young. Had they failed to produce eggs and were keeping at it until something happened? Or were they just enjoying themselves?? Are sparrowhawks the bonobos of the raptor scene? Strangely, the published literature has failed to help me with this question.

This unrestrained mating duet somehow suggests an element of enjoyment but I’m no doubt anthropomorphising.

A typical “bout” as D.H.Lawrence might have put it, would usually start with the female sitting high in my neighbour’s pine tree calling for her mate. Often she was in possession of some prey, and demonstrated a bit of multitasking by intermittently ripping out its entrails between summons.

Female sparrowhawk calling the male

Sparrowhawk tearing prey

Eventually the male would turn up, perch on a nearby branch and then hop over to engage in some avian sexual congress. My attention during this period was directly primarily towards the snacks. Would the female share a hunk of flesh as a bit of a “thank you” to her partner for, as it were, coming on command?

Sparrowhawk pair after mating

It appeared not. I watched the whole sequence of activities a few times, and while the male would lurk nearby for a while, possibly eyeing up the gobbets of LBB flesh in the claws of its mate, I never once saw the female share the spoils.

Female sparrowhawk with food

On this occasion the female sparrowhawk flew off with a large chunk of uneaten prey (mostly, as you can see, legs). At the time, I was hoping she might be heading toward the nest to feed some hungry chicks.

With no post-coital snacks on offer, the male often ended these encounters by gathering material to renovate the nest. Trying to work out what was going on, I struggled to imagine him somehow inserting these liquidambar leaves around some eggs or wriggly, begging chicks. I began to suspect this pair did not quite know what they were doing.

Sparrowhawk with nesting materials

Despite neighbourhood excitement every time one of the pair flew towards the nest with some prey, it seems that this year there won’t be any sparrowhawk fledglings doing yoga in the trees or playing by the swimming pool. Throughout this cool and rainy La Nina spring, there was mating and there was nest building, but nothing came of it. Perhaps the nest blew away in one of this year’s storms. Perhaps the late appearance of the cicadas meant fewer easy snacks. Perhaps the pair just simply didn’t produce any fertile eggs. All I can say is, they certainly tried.

Come back next year, my lovelies. I might even give you more privacy this time.

More raptor tales from our Berowra backyard

Death and sibling rivalry

The very big fish

Crested hawks for Christmas

Motherhood on a windy day

An eagle in suburbia

The battle of the baby birds

Cartwheels and company: the young eagles

Loves and leaves

Sex, nests and dogfighting

Encounters with eagles

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mccnmatt

Posted on

January 16, 2021

Posted under

egg laying, juveniles, kayaking, mating, national parks, raptors

Cartwheels and company: the young eagles

Fog in Marramarra National Park

It’s hard to keep your eyes on the road sometimes, crossing Dyarubbin – the Hawkesbury. For those not entranced by the scene of early-morning fog spilling down the gullies in Marramarra National Park, there’s the raptor action. If you were heading north on the Peat’s Ferry Bridge about 6.30 on Sunday morning, for instance, you would have seen these two young sea-eagles eagles just a few metres above the freeway.

Two young eagles crossing Dyarubbin

Eagles cartwheeling

I caught sight of them first from afar, tumbling and whirling. The cartwheeling argument was brief but emphatic – a couple of lunges at each others’ talons – one bird upside-down – as they fell from the sky. Then abruptly it was all over. The two flew off companionably through the mist, pulling up in a tall eucalypt on the shores of Spectacle Island.

The young eagles parking up

Needless to say, I did a U turn in my kayak and went to have a better look.

The eagles watching the kayaking photographer

Two youngsters. Siblings, I thought – hanging out together, just like the collared sparrowhawk fledglings we watched grow up in our backyard a few years back. What a wonderful omen for the new year! The plentiful rains of La Nina and their fecundity – an explosion of spring wildflowers, new growth on all the trees, insects everywhere – and also this – two chicks from one raptor nest! Sea-eagle parents is lucky to have one chick make it each year. Two fledgelings defeating death – what a thing to see!

But then I noticed their bellies: the tan-coloured torso of the eagle on the left – much lighter than the brown chest feathers of the other youngster. Fledgelings are a dark brown colour and over three or four years, as they mature, their plumage slowly changes to the eponymous white belly and crisp grey wings of adults. These two were definitely not nest-mates.

Tan belly, brown belly: immature and juvenile eagles

So what was going on here? Training flights? Teen romance? Territorial aggro?

A cursory read of accounts of sea eagle behaviour suggested that the mid-air argument I saw by the freeway is a characteristic courtship display. But sea eagles are only mate at adulthood – some distance away for this two. Plus there’s some controversy over the received wisdom about romantic cartwheeling flights. Some researchers say raptors are more likely to be aggressive than sexy when they get into these mid-air tumbles. And sometimes – although less often – this kind of in-flight wrestling is simply play (Simmons, 1993, 17). There’s not much aggro going on here – or it doesn’t seem like it to my untutored eye.

The young eagles getting closer

The eagles watching the kayaking photographer

So if they weren’t courting and didn’t seem to be competing over territory, what were these two eagles doing hanging out together?

I wondered at first about co-operative breeding. Quite a few Australian birds have offspring that don’t disperse straight after they’ve left the nest, but stay with their parents and help to raise their siblings in subsequent years. A few species raptors do it too, at least occasionally – including some hawks and eagles – with immature helpers and sometimes even unrelated adult birds helping build nests, defend territory or feed chicks.

There’s some debate about whether young white-bellied sea eagles leave the territory of their parents at around six months old or hang around for a few years before heading off somewhere new. When I say controversy, I mean a mild-mannered, ornithological debate conducted on paper – not a gun fight at ten paces. But regardless it seems a bit unlikely that I saw co-operative breeding in action. . Unlike other co-operative breeders raptors tend to have adult helpers. And teaching younger raptors aerial skills isn’t something I’ve read in the chores of “helper” in cooperative breeding set ups, though maybe it happens!

The older, immature sea eagle

Big mixed groups of adult, immature and juvenile sea eagles have been seen in some places, like Jervis Bay, south of here, particularly in autumn. Researchers have have compared this behaviour to the large congregations of Bald Eagles in the US, which gather to take advantage of an abundance of prey. Jennifer Spencer and her colleagues conclude groups of white-bellied sea-eagles are “unlikely to be permanent associations [but] they may have an important social role as conspecifics were frequently observed engaging in mock attacks and courtship displays (Spencer, 217). Perhaps something like this – though a bit more socially distanced – was going on here on Dyarubbin.

A while back, Steven Debus, who really does know his raptors, observed “for its size, appearance, and abundance on the densely human-populated coasts of south-eastern Australia, the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster is remarkably little studied” (2008,166). But I bet someone out there knows these two youngsters were up to. If you’re a sea-eagle watcher and can fill in the gaps – drop me a line! I’d love to know.

And, in the absence of an evidence base of any kind, I’m going to take the cartwheels and the company of eagles as a sign of good things for the year to come.

And looking the other way – the Hawkesbury River Bridge in a moody mode

More about eagles I’ve met on Dyarubbin

The very big fish

An eagle in suburbia

Paper roads, private rivers

Encounters with eagles

The great war and rubbish

References

S J S Debus, (2008) “Biology and Diet of the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster Breeding in Northern Inland New South Wales” Australian Field Ornithology 2008, 25, 165–193

T.E. Dennis, G.J. Fitzpatrick and R.W. Brittain (2012) “Phases and duration of the White-bellied Sea-Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster breeding season in South Australia and the implications for habitat management Corella, 36(3): 63-68

Terry E. Dennis, Rebecca R. Mcintosh & Peter D. Shaughnessy (2011) Effects of human disturbance on productivity of White-bellied Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetus leucogaster), Emu – Austral Ornithology, 111:2, 179-185

Rebecca Kimball, Patricia Parker and Janes Benarz (2003) “Occurrence and evolution of cooperative breeding among the diurnal raptors”
The Auk 120(3):717–729, 2003

R. E. Simmons & J. M. Mendelsohn (1993) “A critical review of cartwheeling flights of raptors”, Ostrich, 64:1, 13-24,

Jennifer A. Spencer & Tim P. Lynch (2005) Patterns in the abundance of White-bellied Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetusleucogaster) in Jervis Bay, south-eastern Australia, Emu – Austral Ornithology, 105:3, 211-216

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

December 31, 2020

Posted under

Backyard birds, breeding, cicadas, competition, Insects, mating, nesting, predation, raptors, territoriality

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Crested hawks for Christmas

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.

Spotted pardelote

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.

Pair of rainbow bee eaters

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.

Collared sparrowhawk hiding in the foliage of a liquidambar

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.

Adult Pacific baza

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?

Juvenile baza showing crest and aggro

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.

Looking for prey

Sparrowhawk hunting from a pine tree

Sparrowhawk ignoring dregs of its last meal

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.

When something gets stuck on the way down

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.

Stick insect

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.

No, don’t look back to 2020 sparrowhawk! Forward, always forward.

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

Briggs, Allan (2018) “Breeding biology and behaviour of a pair of Pacific Bazas ‘Aviceda subcristata’ in central-coastal Queensland over 10 years”. Australian Field Ornithology, Vol. 35, 2018: doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.20938/afo35095101.
James, P. (2004). The breeding cycle of a pair of Pacific Bazas Aviceda subcristata in south-eastern Queensland. Australian Field Ornithology 21, 133–140
Olsen, Jerry, Judge, David, Trost, Susan and Stephen Debus (2018) “Diets of breeding Brown Goshawks Accipiter fasciatus and Collared Sparrowhawks A. cirrocephalus near Canberra, Australia and comparisons with other regions and raptors” Corella, 42

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

January 28, 2019

Posted under

Backyard birds, mating, Native birds, Satin bowerbirds, Uncategorized, Waste

The bowerbird bachelors

You know life has been intense when an incident from the backyard in spring doesn’t make it to the blog until the tailend of summer. Our backyard re-enactment of “The Bachelor” had to be at least four months ago because satin bowerbirds only do their courtship routines from April for September. The bowerbird dating show was a while ago now, but it was a truly memorable occasion.

A couple of times in the past we’ve found some blue items – pegs, bottle tops – in the bottom of the garden, collected together and rearranged over a period of days in a mysterious and seemly significant way. But this time the assemblage was visible from our back verandah. We had ringside seats for the show.

Though he was decked our in the iridescent black of a mature male – something that only happens when satin bowerbirds are at least seven years old – our bachelor seemed to be new at this. There was no signs of a bower per se, just his collection of pretty objects in an unsalubrious corner of the garden. I spent a day on the deck “working from home”, watching him shuffling them around. The milkbottle/yellow leaf combination seemed to be a particular favourite.

Satin bowerbird with milk bottle trophy

A dangerous blue toy

A favourite combo – yellow leaf and milkbottle

After quite a bit of this faffing around, he had a visit from a female.

Female satin bowerbird comes to look around

Cue bending, twisting, flapping of wings, along with some impressive eye bulging.

Courtship behaviour of the satin bowerbird – bowing

Flapping…

…and eye bulging

Well, impressive to me but possibly not to the visiting female. I know it’s anthropomorphic but this face screams “get me out of here!”

“I’m a satin bowerbird… get me out of here!”

And indeed, within minutes, a second male arrived on the scene, having surveyed the situation from afar. He had a look around, somewhat dismissively it appeared, and then abruptly flew off with the female in tow. I almost heard him muttering out of the corner of his beak “C’mon babe”.

Second male looking on from the distance

Second male not very impressed by our bachelor’s display

Our bachelor, thwarted, seemed to decide that inadequacies in his collection of blue objects was the key problem. My kids had helpfully (if problematically from a plastic waste point of view) scattered some colourful gee-gaws around the back patio. Our guy seemed concerned that one of the “house” wattlebirds might have an eye on the azure ornaments that were key to his sexual success. It was on.

Showdown between bowerbird and wattlebird

“Mess with my blue things and I mess with your foot!”

One distinctly irked bowerbird

Having put the little wattlebird firmly back in its box, our lovelorn male returned with additional trinkets to pimp his bower. But to no avail.

More courtship display

Unimpressed female bowerbird

There were other visitors that afternoon, but despite sustained and prurient interest, I saw no signs of sexual congress and the next day there was no repeat performance although the blue objects remained in their inauspicious arrangement by the woodpile.

However, a couple of weeks later the abandoned pile of treasures received another inspection from a “green” – presumably a young male who hadn’t yet earned the glossy violet-black feathers of a grown-up.

Juvenile male pimping the bower

“And these sticks should go… there!”

He seemed to be practising his courtship display, favouring golden twigs rather than the milk-bottle/leaf combo. He had that eye-bulge down pat already though. I wonder if we will see him back – perhaps in the mottled black-and-green plumage – for the next season of the Bowerbird Bachelors.

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

November 12, 2017

Posted under

Biodiversity, breeding, Brush turkeys, Death, egg laying, mating, Native birds, nesting, predation, raptors

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Battle of the baby birds

Male sparrowhawk taking off with prey. Photo by Josh Matthews.

There’s a festival of death going on in our neighbourhood at the moment.

Several times a day, amongst the robotic clicks of the bower birds and the squawks of the wattlebirds, there’s an insistent high pitched chittering call, often accompanied by the din of freaked out noisy miners. I’m not 100% sure of its ethological or evolutionary significance, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a signal for me to drop everything and dart up our drive with my camera. One of the resident pair of collared sparrowhawks – probably the male – has caught some small clueless bird and is perched in our neighbour’s radiata pine steadily eviscerating it.

Female sparrowhawk getting stuck in

“Beak? Yuk” – see above the hawk’s head

Dead wattlebird being sized up

He rips off the feathers and flings away less tasty bits (check out the beak mid-air above) all the while, often with his mouth full, calling out “Dinner’s up!” to his mate.

Sparrowhawk calling for his mate

Mid-meal call

For the last few weeks she’s been spending much of her time in a the nest at the very top of another decrepit pine tree in the yard of next house along the way. Sometimes he flies up to the nest with tasty chunks of flayed bird flesh in his claws, but I’ve also seen her fly in to the designated “disembowling” perch to join him a few times. Occasionally, she seems to sneak away to do a little light hunting herself. Risky, though, leaving the nest unattended.

Currawong after the sparrowhawk nest

Collared sparrowhaw about to fly

There’s the pied currawong I saw hopping surreptitiously through the branches, warily inching towards the nest, until it was chased off by the indignant parents as it was virtually peeping over the side. And the pair of cacophonous channel billed cuckoos I caught flapping around the neighbour’s garden a few weeks ago – apparently they sometimes parasitise collared sparrowhawk nests.

Pair of channel billed cuckoos

But I will be deeply unimpressed if the chicks that come out of that nest are bloody channel billed cuckoos, for all my secret admiration of those giant hornbill beaks and strapping crucifix silhouettes.

Because the sparrowhawks seem to have rid our garden of the plague of baby brush turkeys.

Baby brushturkey in the backyard

A whipbird seems to have taken up residence this spring. Needless to say, I don’t have a photograph despite being nearly eye to eye with the noisy bugger once or twice. So, tiptoeing round my backyard trying to catch a clear shot, I heard a scrabbling in the leaf litter. “Ah, a baby brushturkey” I thought sagely.

And then it struck me… I haven’t seen a single baby turkey in our backyard this year. Not one! Last year, they were sleeping on top of the predator proof cage or standing outside in the daytime, gazing longingly at our flock of little baby chooks. The year before one wandered into our pocketsized laundry and spent eight hours pacing the two foot long windowsill, failing to notice and thus escape through through the wide open door. But this year… nada.

Baby brush turkey hanging out with baby Winter the Leghorn

Baby brush turkey being liberated from the laundry

Collared sparrowhawks (unlike their lookalikes brown goshawks – so similar that it’s altogether possible they could be our resident raptors) catch most of their prey in flight, bursting out of their lurking places in the foliage to grab little birds on the wing. But the baby brush turkeys that previously haunted our place do fly, right from the day they dig themselves out of their hatching place in their father’s mound of decomposing leaf litter, and start their life of unnaturally early independence.

So maybe the sparrowhawks have been catching them on those very first short flights from mound to chicken yard.

Baby brushturkey on an early flight

Dad and mound

Eight hours into the vigil on the windowsill

Much mourney Treasure the Sussex and an entourage of brush turkeys

Just a few of the even dozen visiting in the last few years

I don’t hate brush turkeys, but I do hate a having dozen brush turkeys hanging out in my backyard, sexually assaulting my chickens, nicking their food and, given half the chance, eating their eggs. So the idea of generations of sparrowhawks breeding happily in the neighbour’s trees and keeping the local population to manageable levels is extremely appealing.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s a connection between the familiar sound of chainsaws and the plague populations of brush turkeys in Brisbane and the northern suburbs of Sydney over the last few years. No dingoes, fewer foxes foxes thanks to baiting, and nowhere much for the local raptors to nest in suburbia these days, the tallest trees victims of fears about bushfires and death-dealing or at least car-damaging falling branches.

But today my endless blurry photos of the neighbourhood raptor nest brought good news: what seems to be a creamy ball of fluff snuggling up to its mum in the distant collection of sticks that is the sparrowhawk’s nest. Bring on the next generation of brush turkey assassins!