Category Archives: Native birds

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February 26, 2022

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Backyard birds, feeding fledglings, habitat, national parks, Native birds, Plants that attract wildlife

A day out at the pool with the kids

During most of spring we woke up every morning to the sound of sparrowhawks shagging.  But for the last couple of months the alarm clock has been the crack of a whip.

An eastern whipbird pair have been whiling away time in our garden, offering their distinctive antiphonal duet – the male first with his whipcrack, followed up by his mate with a “chu chu”.  But they’ve had an extra with them this year – a youngster, with a kind of squelchy call that reminds me a bit of the red-crowned toadlets that I’ve been hearing on the fire trails throughout this soggy soggy summer.

Recently fledged juvenile whipbird

The whipbirds have some interesting child-rearing habits, according to researchers Amy Rogers and Raoul Mulder.  They usually lay a couple of eggs.  Once the chicks fledge, the parents divide the task of looking after the kids quite formally between them.  Each parent looks after one of the fledglings exclusively.  You can imagine the therapy bills .  There’s an exception – if only one chick survives, then it’s mum who’s in charge.  So I guess it’s maternal care we’ve seen as we’ve watched the adult and juvenile slipping in and out of sight around the garden.  There’s definitely a whip-cracking male around, but all thee have only been spotted together in the garden once – and I wasn’t there with my camera to catch it, so I question if it ever really happened.

Whipbird chicks spend about six weeks with their parents after fledging, sometimes even hanging around until the next season, and it’s been interesting watching the adult and its offspring interacting, as the young one slowly morphs from its slighty fluffy, brown “I just came out of the nest” look to something more like an adult appearance.

Adult whipbird with a juvenile following it

I think one reason the whipbirds make such regular appearances in our yard is the frightful mess it’s in.  We’re not path sweepers or lawn groomers.  More stick-pilers, fungus-harbourers and ignorers-of-organic-detritus.  My efforts to promote biodiversity are not solely confined to a failure to rake, however.  I’ve sunk the value of at least one of the kids’ kidneys into shrubs, vines and groundcovers, some of which have survived.  While I have regularly seen the whipbirds in our kiwifruit arbor and the youngster has been spotted leaping about in a demented way amongst the ferns and vines outside our kitchen window, the native violets, which are threatening to overrun the house during this wettest summer in 30 years, seem to be a favoured spot.

Here we see chick watching mum head down bum up in the viola hederacea (you can just see the tail in the lower half of the first picture).  Next it’s little one that has its butt in the air, retrieving something invisible but presumably tasty.

Juvenile whipbird watching adult hunting for food

Juvenile whipbird looking for tucker in the native violets
Juvenile whipbird with its find

 

Despite their furtive habits and preference for the undergrowth, it turns out whipbirds can be pretty assertive under the right circumstances.  I was impressed by the use of eye contact in a  show-down with one of our many resident brush turkeys over a bird bath.

Eastern whipbird and brush turkey eye to eye

Showdown at the bird bath

Eastern whipbird and brushturkey peaceably drinking

The best time to spot two generations of whipbirds is around lunchtime, at the birdbath.  Mum arrives first, has a wash and then a bit of a groom, perched above on some wonga wonga vines.

Whipbird mum having a wash

Having a splash

If the coast is clear, the youngster appears.

Juvenile whipbird perched on a bird bath

Juvenile whipbird taking its turn in the birdbath

Juvenile whipbird and mum nose to nose 2 crop amended small

Juvenile whipbird and mum beak to beak

Awwwwww.

Having watched this scene of filial affection unfolding around the birdbath at home, I was quite delighted to catch what I thought were some similarly touching moments at a pool in a more natural setting.

Brown thornbill in a banksia serrata

Brown thornbill in a banksia serrata

Eastern yellow robin

Spinebill feeding from a banksia serrata

Grey fantail - perhaps a young 'un with a bit of brown on the breast

Grey fantail – perhaps a young ‘un with a bit of brown on the breast

Lewin’s honeyeater in a banksia serrata

Juvenile spinebill hanging

As a devoted parent, I’m always happy to drive my kids to music lessons… especially if the music teacher’s home happens to be right next to a national park.  On a sunny late afternoon during one of these high-speed twitching sessions, I spotted some action high up in a Sydney red gum.

A hollow on top of a horizonal branch seemed to have formed a natural pool which was evidently a magnet for the local birdlife.

Rainbow lorikeet in an angophora
A drink from the loft pool
Two juvenile spinebills near the natural pool in the angophora tree

Two juvenile spinebills near the natural pool in the angophora tree

Juvenile spinebill hovering
Spinebill drinking
Juvenile spinebills playing, fighting or perhaps play fighting

Juvenile spinebills playing, fighting or perhaps play fighting

I could see that there were some juvenile spinebills about, and some adults too.  Squinting through my lens I wasn’t quite sure what kind of pool side action was going on up there in the canopy.  Perhaps adults giving a tour to youngsters of all the best places to drink and bathe in their forest home? Showing them the ropes in this lofty aquatic environment – explaining the avian equivalent to those “no petting” “no bombing” rules perhaps?

When I got home and had a good look at the photos I found out otherwise.

Adult whipbird shirtfronting a juvenile by the angophora pool

Adult whipbird shirtfronting a juvenile by the angophora pool

Adult spinebill attacking a juvenile
“Keep away from the pool”
Adult spinebill after a celebratory bathe

Adult spinebill after a celebratory bathe in the treetop pool

These poolside antics give “competitive dad” a whole new meaning.

Apparently, spinebills can have up to 5 clutches of eggs each year – almost as soon as one clutch are fledged, the parents start making a new nest ready, driving the older juveniles away.  And no free pass for the pool it seems!

Much as I love the gorgeous spinebills, for human Sydneysiders with our eyewatering real estate market and clutches of offspring near at hand, somehow the parenting style of the whipbirds feels closer to home.

Adult male eastern spinebill in a hibiscus tree

Adult male eastern spinebill in a hibiscus tree

More birds in our backyard

Cracking the whip in a messy yard

Blood feud in the dawn redwood

Death and sibling rivalry

Growing up is hard to swallow

Blue eyes and biteys

 

References

K. A. Wood (1996) “Bird Assemblages in a Small Public Reserve and Adjacent Residential Area at Wollongong, New South Wales Wildlife Research, 23, 605-20

Amy Rogers and Raoul Mulder (1996) “Breeding ecology and social behaviour of an antiphonal duetter, the eastern whipbird” Wildlife Research, 1996,23, 605-20

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January 23, 2022

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Backyard birds, Fire, Native birds, nesting, Plants that attract wildlife

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Hot property, water views

It’s been a good season for NSW’s floral emblem. The terrible fires of 2019-20 put some species of waratahs under threat.  Others, subject to fires of lesser intensity, have regrown from the massive underground lignotubers, up to half a tonne in weight, that allow them to regenerate after a burn.  2021 was the first year when botanists predicted a big flush of flowers – and it happened between August and October this year.  And people were out in the bush to appreciate them, thanks to the east coast lockdowns which meant that one of the few activities people could legally and safely do was bushwalk.  Appreciate them and sadly, steal them.  The floristry industry grows its own waratahs but last year so many flowers went missing thanks to visitors to national parks close to suburbia that rangers took to daubing the flowers with blue paint.  Around my way there is much proprietorial concern about the local waratahs.  Pictures of flowers and advice on walks to take to see them appeared on the local facebook group and there was much angst about stolen blooms.  If the flowers are picked, waratas don’t produce seedpods.  The high carb content of waratah seeds, making them a tasty snack for critters means its pretty unlikely they’ll find a spot so well hidden that they get a chance to grow anyway, but if the flower is sitting in a vase on someone’s sideboard, that’s certainly not going to happen.

The flowering season is over now, but waratahs are still hot property as far as the local birdlife is concerned.

Over the summer, I’ve been wandering regularly down to a nearby creek (perhaps rivulet is a better word) to spy on LBBs.  Under the twisted  limbs of the angophoras, the little birds frolic through waist-high shrubs, and nest in the stands of saplings along the creek edge.  It’s a little bit magical.  I’ve been lured along that path by a bold grey strike thrush, who hopped along in front of me the whole way; watched the variegated fairywren blokes get hassle from their female companions; been serenaded by golden whistlers and caught one of the ubiquitous new holland honeyeaters sipping nectar from a mountain devil.  Not to mention regular encounters with the local dragons.

saplings by the creek
golden whistler
Bauera ruboides
grey strike thrush

Little waterdragon that hangs out on the rocks by the creek

mountain devil
silhouette of a thornbill

Male variegated fairywren being sat on by females in his group

spring flowers by the creek
new holland honeyeater and mountain devil

A particular spot where the path crosses the creek has been my go-to since late last year, when I spent an hour watching a parade of little birds quarrelling over bathing rights in the shallows.  It was so delightful I keep going back hoping for more.

Brown thornbill

Striated thornbill drying off
White browed scrub wren trying to have a wash
A pair of striated thornbills

So a couple of weeks ago, to stretch my legs after a day staring at screens, I headed down there.  I spotted the construction in the waratah bush right away.  A nest – exciting in itself, but there was movement.  A live one!

New Holland Honeyeater standing on a nest in a shrub and peeping at the photographer

New Holland honeyeater peeping at the photographer

New holland honeyeater sitting in a waratah bush

New holland honeyeater snug in a nest

This new holland honeyeater seemed so at home, rummaging around in the bottom of the nest, and then sitting in the classic “bird in a nest” position, I assumed I’d met the author of this structure.  But, apparently not.

Red browed finch arriving with nest building materials to find it is occupied by a honeyeater

I would love to hear the inner monologue of this red browed finch.

The finch took a pit stop in another branch of the waratah to recover itself.

Red browed finch with nesting material waits to eject the honeyeater in its nest.

Honeyeater in denial.

I was distracted by a passing dollarbird, and by the time I looked back things were looking very different.

Red browed finch surveying the scene
Ejected honeyeater

Once the nest was reclaimed, the finch and its partner kept on with the nest building.

Drawing though more casuarina needles
Reaching for materials
Nest building
Weaving the top part of the structure

A few days later, I went back to check out this waterfront property after the builders were done.  No signs of the pair of finches.  Perhaps they were tucked up inside?  I hope they hadn’t miscalculated in picking this nest site, so close to a footpath.

What was this honeyeater interloper was up to?  While brood parasites like koels and channel billed cuckoos (obviously) lay eggs in other birds’ nests, to the best of my knowledge stealing a nest from another bird isn’t a common thing, at least amongst smaller birds – although, dear reader, I’d be happy to be corrected on this.  My favourite example of nest reuse (more accurately “protective nesting) is the story of various little birds – sparrows, swallows and starlings – finding spots to lay their eggs in the 3 metre pile of sticks that ospreys accumulate as they return to the same nest over the years. The raptors and their squatters seemed to breed happily side by side, with the insect eaters snaffling critters attracted to the rotting fish corpses in the osprey nest, using osprey feathers for nest lining and getting some protection from predators by cohabiting with great big raptors.

Nonetheless, even reusing your own nest from a previous season’s nest has some downsides.  They often get a bit nasty, hoaching with fleas and other ectoparasites.  Predators also get to know the location. Things are different when nest sites are hard to come by – hollows are often reused again and again – and there’s evidence of the same cliff side peregrine scrape in Tasmania being used for 13 thousand years.

If he wasn’t trying to steal the nest, perhaps the honeyeater was lost?? The red-browed finches’ nest at the time he popped by was a similar shape to the cupped nests that honeyeaters make.  They’re fidgety birds that look like they have a short attention span but it seems a little bit unlikely.

new holland honeyeater perched on a twig

More likely he dropped in to filch some nest materials, a habit lots of birds have.  Looking back at my pictures, it looks like he started out on the hunt for materials and then just settled in and got comfy.
I’ll be back to the creek to keep tabs on this waterfront hot property – from a respectful distance, of course.  The red splash of a waratah in spring is a rare treat but the red baby redbrowed finch or two would be a wonderful consolation prize.
red browed finch in profile
Birdwatching moments down the road from our Berowra backyard
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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

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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October 16, 2021

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predation, Predators, raptors, Satin bowerbirds

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The butchers and the flower eaters

Closeup of sparrowhawk with prey against background of bark

Collared sparrowhawk with prey

The crowd of noisy miners  squabbling right outside my window had me jumping straight out of bed and reaching for my camera.  More than the usual disputes for territory with the “house” little wattlebirds, this had the distinct vibe of a predator in action.  And sure enough there was one of our collared sparrowhawks, perched on a low branch less than 5 metres from my front door, wrapping its laughing gear around what looked like one of the miners.  They weren’t taking the dismemberment of one of their own lying down.  The sparrowhawk stayed very very still while a crowd of miners scolded and divebombed  it. But eventually it was time to do some butchery.

After a certain amount of viscera had been hurled around, the miners obviously decided that Bob wasn’t looking likely to rejoin the flock.  While I was watching, one hold-out had a final swoop – the sparrowhawk ducked and called out repeatedly for moral support.

Sparrowhawk calling for its mate

Calling for moral support

I’m not sure if it was the male (smaller, more bomb-able) or the female (generally chattier) calling for help.  Male and female sparrowhawks really  similar, even though when you see them side by side the females are distinctly larger.

A pair of collared sparrowhawks, showing the female is much larger than the male

Sparrowhawk pair

No chance of comparing sizes on this occasions – calls for help were completely ignored. Eventually this most belligerent miner of the group wandered off to harass some less aggressive passers-by.

I’ve been a vegetarian for over thirty years but this kind of gory scene doesn’t bother me one little bit.

Sparrowhawk with prey

Especially when it’s a noisy miner biting the dust.  I had a look in my files to see if I had any good pictures of miners but nada.  I’m not even that keen on their cousins the more elusive bellbirds – despite the atmospheric calls, like their cousins they’re colonial, driving other bird species out of their patch.  Groups of bell miners can even, somehow, execute the trees they inhabit.

I’ve been a bit surprised at the distaste of lots of bird lovers for scenes of raptor butchery, when I’ve definitely smelt the smoke of barbecues drifting from their backyards.  Where’s the solidarity with other top predators?  Plenty of people seem to be fond of cats.

Thinning out the noisy miners is  not the only environmental service provided by the local birdlife.  The wattlebirds make short work of the window spiders, hovering like hummingbirds and plucking them from the tangled webs, that according to my kids, “make it look like Halloween at our place the whole year round”.  The chooks clean up ticks and fruit fly larvae.  And I captured a juvenile satin bowerbird earlier in the year making a dent in the local caterpillar population, with the help of mum.

Adult female bowerbird feeding juvenile with caterpillar

I don’t mind when the bowerbirds do some tip pruning on my liquidambar tree.

Bowerbird silhouette in the top of a liquidambar tree

But I’m a bit less keen on the scarlet blooms of my “running postman“, few and far between, getting munched, even if that means the local bowerbirds are subscribing, like me, to a plant based diet

Because they’re so famous for their decorative skills, whenever you see male satin bowerbirds collecting pretty stuff, you expect them to be thinking about their bowers.  Like this visitor who I’m pretty sure was sussing out the “bowerbird blue” backyard tennis pole.

But I’m pretty confident that the Kennedia rubicuns flowers this bowerbird was collecting were for snacks, not for interior decor.  How do I know?  Well, some researchers got satin bowerbirds to choose their favourite colour of Froot Loop.  Turns out, even though bowerbirds prefer blue and violet things as decorations in their love-shacks, given a choice of Froot Loop for a snack (not something that happens a lot, admittedly), they’d rather eat red and yellow ones.

Why, you might ask, were scientists trying to goad satin bowerbirds into eating Froot Loops?  Well, it was all about the evolution of preferences for a blue-hued bower.  Researchers were testing whether male bowerbirds evolved to decorate their bowerbirds with blue things because female bowerbirds liked blue snacks (Borgia 1987).  Presumably they came up with this idea in a study with rump steaks, potato wedges and steamed broccoli framed and hung on the walls.

A black male satinbowerbird sitting on a branch looks curiously at the camera

These researchers already had a pretty good idea that they wouldn’t find red Froot Loops in bowers – I know this because of a series of experiments that seem to me to essentially be an interspecies wind-up.  One of these tests involved goading male birds by trashing one half of their bowers and seeing what would happen.  Another, capitalising the “intense dislike for red objects at their bowers”, involved “a clear container over three red objects and quantif[ying]the time for each male to remove the container” and “super-glue[ing] a red square tile to a long screw and fix[ing] the tile into the bower platform and ground below so that it could not be physically removed” (Keagey 2011 1064).  They also recorded the male bower-birds’ come-on lines – their mimicry of other birds – and spied on them to see if they got lucky. I don’t want to perpetuate any stereotypes, but is it a coincidence that the guy running this lab sports the name “Borgia”?

Juvenile satin bowerbird perched in a tree seen in profile with a background of green leaves

Turns out being smart improves your chances of getting lucky (if you’re a male satin bowerbird, anyway) but being very worried about red things in your bower not so much.  Also, bowerbirds are capable of making a clear distinction between decorative items and food.

Somehow this doesn’t seem so odd to me. It’s humans, it seems to me, who don’t seem to be able to adequately categorise their Froot Loops.

A sparrowhawk in flight against a blue sky

References

Jason Keagy, Jean-François Savard, Gerald Borgia (2011) “Complex relationship between multiple measures of cognitive ability and male mating success in satin bowerbirds, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus” Animal Behaviour 81 1063-1070

Gerald Borgia, Ingrid M. Kaatz & Richard Condit (1987) “Flower choice and bower decoration in the satin bowerbird
Ptilonorhynchus violaceus: a test of hypotheses for the evolution of male display” Animal Behaviour, 35, 1129 1139

Matthew Mo (2016) “Diet of the Satin Bowerbird Ptilonorhynchus violaceus in the Illawarra Region, New South Wales, Australia” Corella 40(2)

 

More stories about the sparrowhawks in our backyard

Death and sibling rivalry

Motherhood on a windy day

The battle of the baby birds

Loves and leaves: our sparrowhawks do some nestbuilding

Sex, nests and dogfighting

 

And more about our bowerbirds

The bowerbird bachelors

R2D2 in black and white

Gymnastic bees, virgin fruit and the birds that ate spring

 

Adult female bowerbird feeding juvenile red berry

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August 22, 2021

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Backyard birds, national parks, Native birds, nesting, Plants that attract wildlife, raptors, territoriality

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Loves and leaves

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

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August 8, 2021

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breeding, national parks, Native birds, nesting, waterways

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Warbling in lockdown

Kayak on still river water at dawn with reflections showing the sky

Six weeks into a Sydney lockdown.  Everyone confined to their homes with occasional outings for food and exercise no more than a few ks away.  I feel super lucky that this bit of Dyarrubbin still falls within the 10 k radius I’m allowed to stray from my house. Berowra Creek, at the end of my street, is super quiet at the moment, the houseboats rocking empty at their moorings, jet-skis banished – only the locals heading out in ones or twos for some fresh air.

It seems fitting that the “feature wildlife” of my escape to the river last weekend was also a local – Sydney’s only endemic bird, origma solitaria, the rockwarbler.

Sydney’s only endemic bird – the rock warbler

These little birds are only found within 250 km of Sydney, hopping around mostly on Hawkesbury sandstone, though I’ve hear they also pop up on the limestone and granite, where it is to be found.  Their range on the coast extends from Mollymook  to Raymond Terrace, and they can be found as far west as Orange and in the north can be found up in the beautiful Coolah Tops National Park, according to the CSIRO Australian bird guide favouring “exposed, dissected rock outcrops…from coast (including sea cliffs) to high plateaus  of the ranges” (2017, 340).

Rockwarbler on a mossy rock

Rockwarblers are not uncommon – despite their restricted range they’re flagged as of least concern, conservation-wise – though they don’t appear to inhabit cities like Newcastle, Sydney or even Wollongong or Nowra.  On my noodling 12 k paddle last weekend I spotted one pair busily feeding and nestbuilding on rocks by the waterside, and then, having tuned my ear to their high pitched calls, spotted another pair doing much the same, on the return journey.

I don’t see them on every trip out but I’ve observed them behind golden beaches on Cowan Water and in rocky bays near Dangar Island, and even in one of the spots  at Berowra Creek with the most foot traffic, at Washpool Creek where the Great North Walk meets the estuary.

The rockwarbler is an unremarkable looking little bird – “a small, plump, dark brown-grey bird with a cinnamon-tinged face and forehead, a dull white throat speckled black, reddish-brown underparts”, almost the definition of the LBB – but has some interesting habits.  It makes pendulous domed nests that hang in darkened overhangs and caves in the rocky terrain it prefers – apparently its common name used to be “hanging dick”.  Who says all folk wisdom  needs to be kept alive, eh?

I spotted my first rockwarbler for the day collecting what looked like nest material – roots and possibly spider webs  in the exposed root system of toppled trees on the shoreline. She flew off intermittently into a group of boulders behind some casuarina trees – I couldn’t get a clear shot of the crevice she seemed to be returning to, so no photo of a hanging dick, for which you might well be grateful.

Despite all this, I’d like to get a glimpse of a nest – the description in Birdlife’s online site have a hard core goth appeal:

Made from grasses and plant fibres and coated with spider webs, [the nest] is attached to a rocky overhang or roof of a cave by spider webs, which the bird hammers into place with its bill. They are then covered with saliva to hold them in place

You can see in these pictures that the spot I saw my first pair of rockwarblers has been a important place for humans as well as non-human animals for thousands of years.  The soil here is thick with oystershells, left by the custodians of this country over the centuries, and now woven into the earth in scores of places right along the shores of Berowra Creek.  Everywhere you look around here there’s a midden.

Rockwarblers look a little bit like northern hemisphere robins and seem to have a similar outgoing personality – “confiding” in the words of the CSIRO blue bird book.  This bird and its mate, that soon arrived on the scene, didn’t seem particularly disturbed by a kayaker loitering nearby with a camera, and I managed to drift quite close while they scoured the rocky shore for largely invisible food.

I’ve read that rockwarblers are primarily insect eaters although Carol Probert has reported seeing nectar drinking in some she watched in the Blue Mountains. No evidence of this here but there seemed to be plenty to eat.  This pair traversed the rocks briskly, picking mysterious things from amongst the moss, and even dipping beaks into the little bowls comprised of previously-opened mollusc shells on the rocks.  I’m not sure  if the rockwarblers were scrounging for critters that had found a home in these tiny rockpools.

A second pair of rock warblers looking for food together

There were plenty of insects about in the lee of the rocks, but i didn’t see any of the birds I watched that morning snatching a snack from the air, despite the temptation.

What I did see – once with each pair of birds – was what I think were nuptial gifts – one bird feeding the other snack, perhaps with romantic intentions.  I stress I did not witness any subsequent feathered intimacies but with birds you blink and you’ll miss it, so that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot!

Here’s pair number one, coming beak to beak.

And the second pair

I think I can see a insect leg sticking out from the crumb in the beak of the bird with the tuft of feathers on its back.  I guess these scenes could have been adults feeding juveniles, which look similar to the grown-up rock warblers, only paler in colour, but I didn’t hear any pitiful calls from the recipients and given the time of year – roundabout the beginning of breeding season for many birds – a romantic gesture seems a bit more likely.

Rockwarbler happily feeding

The rockwarblers were pretty friendly to me but also to the other little birds hopping around the nest area, particularly a family of variegated fairywrens that seemed to follow them as they hopped about round the edge of the water.  The warblers kept their feet mostly on rock, the wrens mostly flitting from twig to twig in undergrowth nearby. If there’s dietary competition between these little birds, it’s a very friendly one.

In fact, I suspect this was more like the mixed-flock foraging that have been noticed in many parts of the world in wintertime, when different species of small insectivous birds move around feeding as a group.  Maybe the rockwarblers’ hopping stirred up some flying insects for the wrens to eat?  Some researchers have found that variegated wrens, sometimes hang out with “friends” from other species whose territory overlaps with their own, sharing the defense of that territory, travelling and foraging together. This benefited the wrens a lot – they “spent more time foraging, were less vigilant [and] had greater first-nest fledging success” (Johnson, 2018, 821).  I wonder if the wrens were as friendly as this with my rockwarblers?

Male variegated fairywren
jenny variegated fairywren
silvereye in the casuarinas

The atmos not so friendly amongst the waterbirds feeding nearby.  I watched a whitefaced heron repeatedly asserting dominance over a striated heron on a sequence of estuarine patches, as I trekked back the put-in.  Berowra’s ubiquitous waders are higher up the pecking order than ubiquitous lurkers it seems.

Striated heron irked enough to walk away
Striated heron finally gives up on this patch of shoreline

And then, just as I turned the corner to the marina, high over all, the alpha local of these lands.   A wedgie soaring silently, surveying its domain.

 

References

Davis, William M and Recier, Harry “Winter mixed species foraging flocks in acacia woodland of Western Australia” Corella, 2002, 26 (3), 74-79
Menkhorst, Peter; Rogers, Danny; Clarke, Rohan; Davies, Jeff; Marsack, Peter; Franklin, Kim The Australian Bird Guide, 2017 CSIRO Publishing
Probets, Carol ; Palmer, Grant ; Fitzsimons, James “Nectarivory in the Rockwarbler ‘origma solitaria’ Australian field ornithology, January 2019, Vol.36, p.34-35
Smith, Peter ; Smith, Judy “Re-use of a rockwarbler ‘origma solitaria’ nest over a 13-year period” Australian field ornithology, 2012-06-01, Vol.29 (2), p.77-82
Other locals in our backyard
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February 6, 2021

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Backyard birds, brood parasites, feeding fledglings, habitat, Insects, Native birds

Growing up is hard to swallow

Juvenile koel in a pitto tree

It’s all about the young koels in our yard at the moment.  We have at least two of them hanging around the back yard, begging for food and slowly destroying the mental health of their red wattlebird adoptive parents.  Well, I hope for their sake there are more than one set of parents doing the provisioning.

Red wattlebird with spider for its koel young
Red wattlebird ready to take off with its spider
Wattlebird feeding a koel chick
koel mantling for a discreet meal

While I’m still hearing koels begging endlessly, I have a suspicion that the parents are trying to  back off from supplying food. As a parent of teenagers I can certainly empathise.  Wattlebirds normally feed fledgelings for two or three weeks after leaving the nest.  The soundscape of our yard started to be dominated by the pleas of the koel youngsters around mid-January, so I think the parents’ patience is starting to wear pretty thin. I’m pretty sure that the koels are trying to push that envelope though.

I watched this rather grown-up looking chick sitting on a branch to beg relentlessly for at least half an hour without attention.  It whined and shuffled, whined and groomed.

Koel impatiently grooming

It seemed to despair of getting any attention at one point and started rummaging around for its own tucker.   Clearly this flaccid flower didn’t cut the mustard.

Desperation drives an attempt to eat whatever was within reach

Eventually the relentless moaning did result in a couple of snacks.

Koel fledgeling begging
Wattlebird coming in with food
A big mouth…
…being fed

While waiting …. and waiting, and waiting… (I was almost as impatient as the koel for this fledgeling to get a feed…) I spotted a second youngster lurking nearby.  It looked a bit skinnier and its plumage a bit patchier and at first I wondered if it was a younger chick, hogging the attention of the exhausted parents.  But usually female koels only lays a single egg in a nest – which make sense since the chick heaves competitor eggs and hatchlings out.  Sometimes, it seems, koel females will return to lay an egg in a sequence of different nests so perhaps this second youngster was being fed by a different harried parent.  I feel kind of relieved on their behalf.

Nestmate? Biological sibling?

One way or another, all that whining seems to be getting less of a response this weather.  So our backyard koel chicks are having to forage for their own food. This nugget looks kind of unappealing, though perhaps no worse than the spider that I saw mum or dad retrieving a couple of weeks ago.

Koel chick with mysterious food

Our neighbour’s bangalow palm seems to be a favourite foraging ground.

Koel in the bangalow palm.
Koel in bangalow palm

Perhaps the temptations of the palms are a bit too great.  Last week, I watched a youngster beg from a branch near our back verandah for a while.  No parental attention was forthcoming, and I thought it had given up, as it went surprisingly silent for quite some time, hunching and looking pensive.  Then this happened:

Juvenile koel waiting for…
this cameo appearance
from a bangalow palm fruit
and its subsequent disappearance

I think this mysterious fruit must have been stashed in the bird’s crop, .  Certainly this same koel was stacking away the berries at an extraordinary rate on its visit to the bangalow palm, so the idea that it was tucking it away for a later snack seems pretty plausible.  Having read a bit about the way birds use crops – a muscular pouch in the oesophagus that stores food – I am now tremendously jealous.  What a terrific idea!  Why the hell don’t humans have one?  I suppose blokes can use beards, although that’s a visually disturbing alternative.

Koels – noisy, whiny parasites – get a bit of a bad rap around here, but I can’t help admire them – their chutzpah, their gorgeous feathers, and their admirable capacity to never, it seems, go hungry.

Koel posing

 

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January 16, 2021

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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 (Haliaeetusï¿¿leucogaster) in Jervis Bay, south-eastern Australia, Emu – Austral Ornithology, 105:3, 211-216

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December 31, 2020

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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
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September 7, 2019

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kayaking, national parks, Native birds, raptors, Uncategorized, waterways

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An eagle in suburbia

Even by Sydney’s high standards – a city of four and a half million people surrounded by national parks – Berowra is absurdly well supplied with wide open spaces.

Bute and sunny trees

Upstream in Cowan Creek from Bobbin Head, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

There’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park on the eastern side of the railway track.  To the west, on the other side of the Berowra creek, Marramarra National Park; to the north Muogamarra, only open to the public on six weekends a year and further, beyond the Hawkesbury, Brisbane Waters, Popran and Dharug National Parks.

Pelican graces distant 2 copy

Pelican grace at the mouth of Mullet Creek in Brisbane Water National Park

To the south, the second smallest and newest of them, Berowra Valley became a national park in 2012, soon after we moved here.  It follows the line of Berowra Creek through the suburbs as far as Cherrybrook.

If you put your kayak in Berowra Creek at the entertainingly named Dusty Hole and paddle upstream, you’re not in the wilderness. On the other side of the park, there’s the horsey country of Berilee and Dural – my go-to place for compost-making – and on this side you’re just a hop skip and a jump from Kuring-gai Industrial Park, featuring Inflatable World, the Steggles chicken factory and a host of timber and roofing suppliers.

But when you’re on the water at dawn, you could be in the middle of nowhere.

White faced heron profile crop

White faced heron hunting in Berowra Creek

 

On a high tide, you can wend your way past the sandstone rock arch quite a way up Sam’s Creek.  For all its outsize weeds and murky water, this does not feel like gully just a couple of ks downhill from the freeway.

Mouth of Sam's creek adjusted

The mouth of Sam’s Creek

Last weekend, I took a favourite side trip, down an alleyway of mangroves to a waterfall amplified by the rains.

Waterfall blurry 2

Waterfall into Berowra Creek

Below the footbridge that crosses Calna Creek, by the boardwalk across the saltmarsh, is a good place to pull in and stretch your legs.  The Great North Walk and the side tracks up Lyrebird Gully meet there, so there’s always a danger of being being forced to listen to an energetic conversation about property prices from the Sunday morning walkers, but skimming across the shallows up Calna Creek you can almost always outpace them.

Casuarinas and saltmarsh at Berowra Creek
Little pied cormorant drying its wings
Reflections in Still Creek, opposite Crosslands
Rock reflections
More rock reflections

There’s even a place to camp on the way at Crosslands Reserve, absurdly close to the Hornsby shops.  There’s a hint of civilisation as you pass the run-down convention centre and catch the smell of breakfast bacon, and then you’re back in the fog and the towering eucalypts.

Shiny trees and blue fog past crosslands

Female water dragon on a summer morning
Near Crosslands Camp
Into another world

 

It’s 18ks, or thereabouts, from the ferry to the rock garden that’s the navigable limit of the creek, and back again.  And in the hours before the scouts stir in their sleepingbags, the creek is ridiculously quiet.  Apart from the inevitable lyrebird, busying itself with car alarm impressions in the undergrowth.

The upper reaches of Berowra Creek
Mangrove relections
Above Crosslands
More mangrove reflections
Illuminated trees at Crosslands crop

Illuminated trees by the campsite at Crosslands

But on the way back from the headwaters last weekend, something new.

Wedgie wide

A wedge-tailed eagle in Berowra Creek

A wedge-tailed eagle enjoying the morning sunshine, high above the water.

Of course, there are eagles on the creek every day of the week – on a day out in a boat you’re guaranteed to see the white bellied sea eagles that hunt there, and maybe even hear a few of their embarrassingly duck-like calls.  I saw a sea-eagle last Sunday, as usual, waiting above the water for the mist to clear.

Sea eagle in fog crop tight

White-bellied sea eagle in the mist

And once I saw an osprey by the creek, slightly dishevelled and hungry looking.

Osprey staring at me
Osprey profile

But there’s still something special about seeing the largest raptor in Australia hanging at the end of your street.  Maybe the leafy north shore counts as the open forest wedgies favour.  There’s certainly plenty of rabbits to keep them going.

Wedge-tailed eagle in flight near Cowan Creek
Rabbit cowering in a decorative context

I’ve been reminded this week that Berowra is more like a country town than suburbia. When there’s a car crash, residents come out to redirect traffic.  When your kid falls and grazes their knee walking to school, a passerby scoops them up and drives them home.  Lost keys and wallets speed their way to their owners.  Maybe the eagles have picked up on the rural atmosphere.

Rural enough for rabbits and roadkill, shall we say, but not so much that we’re not murderously anxious about them carrying off our newborn lambs.  With the stories of wedgies poisoned in their hundreds, I’m glad to see them here.  And I’m glad to be here too.

Insect head reflection

More raptor stories from around these parts

Encounters with eagles

Death and good fortune: a peregrine hunting in Cowan Creek

Two sad islands, three whistling kites

Sex, nests and dog fighting: our family of sparrowhawks get in the family way

Death and sibling rivalry: our baby sparrowhawks learn to hunt

The very big fish