The trouble with the younger generation

It’s not often that the stars are in alignment for a midweek paddle but occasionally it happens.  Children elsewhere, being forced to make music for 48 straight hours; the car (or “kayak transportation device” as I prefer to call it) sitting there unused and no pressing work engagements before 9 am on a Wednesday morning.

Berowra Creek was delightfully quiet, save for a handful of tinnies bearing estuarine commuters towards the wharf and the road to the big smoke roundabout 7 o’clock.  I guess that’s rush hour on the Hawkesbury.

Ferry lights closer crop

Pre-dawn rush at the Berowra Creek ferry

A peaceful river, low tide… time for the shy critters to come out of the mangroves and feast in the mud.

Juvenile Striated heron hunting silhouette with catch brightened

Juvenile striated heron with a tiny fish

I go past the mouth of Joe Crafts Bay quite regularly.  It’s a magical place, blessed with reflections and rolling fog, and a secret creek filled with darting fish.

Towards Joe Craft bay

Looking to Joe Crafts Bay on a misty day

I’m always expecting to see something exotic there, like the critically endangered Eastern Curlew, visiting Australian coast during the northern winter after an epic migration from Russia and western China.   Mostly I see bird-shaped sticks.  But on this quiet morning, what I initially suspected to be a stick turned out not one, but two striated herons.

Juvenile striated heron profile in water 2 amended darkened

Juvenile striated heron pretending no one is looking

It’s pretty unusual to get a good look at these birds, described on one twitcher website, unnecessarily cruelly I think, as “a dumpy little heron with a large head“. Or if you were really mean you might describe it as a dumpy little heron with a jack-in-the-box neck.

Juvenile striated heron alarmed lightened 2 amended square

Juvenile striated heron with neck stretch

I normally spot striated herons only after I’ve already bugged them enough to burst out of their hiding places in the mangroves and fly off, disgruntled, down the river.

Striated heron stretching

Adult striated heron perching at high tide

They are not given to making a lot of noise and hunt stealthily, perched on a low branch over shallow water or creeping along the shoreline looking for little fish, crabs or crustaceans.  Interestingly, they sometimes also fish with bait – dropping a feather or leaf on the water to lure fish to the surface to investigate.  These birds seem to be quite smart  – researchers have even recorded youngsters playing with bugs, fruit and pieces of wood – perhaps practicing for bait fishing.

But for all their creativity, young herons like most juvenile birds, seem to be a little bit slow on the uptake when they unexpectedly encounter a mammal in a boat.  And long may that stupidity continue.

Juvenile striated heron from behind square and lightened

Pensive looking juvenile striated heron

There was also an adult bird on this particular mudflat, clever enough to stay a lot further away.

adult striated profile crop

Adult striated heron, macroryncha subspecies

And while the adult wasn’t incredibly impressed with me being in its territory, it was really very pissed off that it was having to share its patch of low tide real estate with a young heron.  According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Heron Conservation group – an impressively specialised body – African striated herons are so determined to defend their territory that you only find a couple of individuals in a 13 kilometre stretch of river.  Our aggro Aussie adult, true to form, went after the youngster no less than three times while I was watching, chasing it off the prime spots on the mudflat with real venom.

Adult straited chasing juvenile crop long

Adult striated heron chasing off a juvenile off his feeding grounds

Not so the adult could hunt.  Oh no. Youngster was finding fine pickings.  But having cleared him out, the adult heron did this:

Nada.  Played a game of statues. Or maybe pretended to be a stick for the benefit of nosy kayakers. It’s always pleasing to see birds behaving as expected.  Here we see an “adult… freez[ing] when disturbed; standing motionless with their bill… at 45 degrees

I was surprised to find that the striated heron, shy and retiring as it is, has been described as “one of the more cosmopolitan herons“, which suggests somehow it has well-used hand luggage tucked away in the mangroves somewhere and frequent flyer points.  Sub-species (in an attractive range of colours) are found right around the world – from Africa, Madagascar, the islands of the Indian Ocean, East Asia, and South America.

Adult Striated heron walking toe out good pattern

Adult striated heron stepping out

Australian striated herons – both the east coast macroryncha, grey with perhaps a flush of wine colour on its underparts, and the reddish-brown stagnatilis which living in the north west – are a bit fussier than many overseas subspecies, living pretty much exclusively in coastal areas in and around mangroves. That’s quite different to the rarer but to my untutored eye somewhat similar looking black bittern that is found along forested rivers, like the Wyong River where I spotted this one, and even rivers much further inland.

If you’re kind of fussy about where you live, Joe Crafts Bay seems a tremendous place to end up.  No wonder the grumpy grownup wants to keep it to himself.

Magic Joe Craft Bay

Joe Crafts Bay at its magical best

 

More adventures on the Hawkesbury

A visit with the eagles of Mooney Mooney Creek

Magic scenes on a cold and foggy day on Cowan Water

The silver river – up Marramarra Creek

Of gods and map readers – into Muogamarra National Park

Two sad islands, three whistling kites – a visit to Barr Island

Burnoff at Bujwa Bay

Alhambra on the Hawkesbury

 

 

 

Death & sibling rivalry

Both birds eyes crop better again

The sibling sparrowhawks in their favourite tree… in my backyard!

It’s happened. Our babies, only three weeks or so out of the nest, are now out there in the big wide world, killing for themselves.  It brings a tear to your eye.

Distant with second bird flying crop

Keeping an eye on little brother or sister

But it’s not all cheery dismemberment:  there’s trouble in the nest.  The siblings to have an uneasy relationship.  I often see them perched on adjacent branches, and when they’re further apart they call out to each other every now and then.  And when one takes off to hunt, the other often falls into line, disappearing suddenly in a simultaneous dive.

But there’s also a certain amount of what might be described in human siblings as petty jealousy.

Yesterday I stood on a chair on the deck for an hour watching one of the sibs engage in  a comprehensive preening session / extended tai chi practice.  I wonder whether this serious self-care might have been the consequence of getting tangled up in one of the humungous org spiders webs stretched out between the trees to catch dragonflies, cicadas and, for the really ambitious arachnid, a passing sparrowhawk.

Preening headless profile tail out crop b&w

… and the headless sparrowhawk

I found the “revenge of the headless raptor” impressive, but his nestmate, looking on from a high branch, seemed rather unimpressed.

Distant top brother looking down b&w

Jeering at silly sibling

But both martial arts and sneering were set aside when the fledgling in the upper branches spotted something tasty beyond the neighbour’s yard.

Juvenile sparrowhawk wings raised square

I’m off…

There was a simultaneous stoop, and then a fracas in the jungle at the bottom of the garden.

White cheeked honeyeater crop

Dinner… a white cheeked honeyeater I prepared earlier

I don’t think the squawking was the work of dinner – an unfortunate white-cheeked honeyeater (rarely seen in our yard.  I wonder why…).  I reckon the ring-ding battle was between the sibs.

The winner landed, very conveniently for me, right next to my washing line, showing the total indifference to human proximity that seems to characterize most young raptors.

 

Sparrowhawk profile left with untouched prey

The lucky sibling with significantly less lucky white cheeked honeyeater

This diffidence did not extend to the presence of little brother or sister though.

Juvenile looking behind for rival

Keeping an eye out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juvenile with head turned mouth open amended

 

Just a few moments after the winner landed with their prize, there was another skirmish.  Luck favours the prepared, and this youngster was in position, with wings spread out protectively around the prey like a sort of meat umbrella. Ew, what a nasty image.

The hungry one had another go, and to be honest, I’m not really sure who was successful, since neither juvenile has any distinctive marks (like a scar over one eye or a dragon tattoo or anything) I am completely unable to tell them apart.

Juvenile plucking the prey

Settling in for a good plucking

Anyway, someone had a lovely meal of raw songbird and someone sat nearby looking on and feeling sorry for themselves.

Sibling watching

Luckless sibling looking on at the feast

Nevermind, buddy.  I’m sure there’s be some tiny, tasty, rather slow birds on the menu for you sometime soon.

The backstory of the serial killers in our backyard…

The new generation of sparrowhawks emerges from the nest…

Baby brush turkeys versus nestling sparrowhawks… the battle of the backyard baby birds

The collared sparrowhawks return to our backyard… or are they brown goshawks?

A first glimpse of the sparrowhawks… and a beautiful white goshawk visits the washing line

Sparrowhawk summer

The sparrowhawks in the bottom of the neighbour’s yard have beaten the odds.  Despite the visits of the hungry currawongs and randy cuckoos, two strapping fledglings have emerged from the nest this week.

Two juvenile sparrowhawks trying out their wings

Our days are punctuated by the insistent call of the mother and father hawks telling the teenagers that it’s time to head back to the ridiculously tiny nest for dinner.  And the juvenile’s answering pitiful cries, disproportionate to their galumphing size.  They’re easily as big as their parents even at this early stage.

Photo of juvenile sparrowhawk with its mouth open

Fledgling sparrowhawk talking back to its parent

And early in the morning, the ding-dong battles between the sparrowhawks and the local mob of sulphur crested cockatoos, that wheel across the valley each day to find the tastiest trees and finest roosting places. The hawks have been watchful but apparently unconcerned by the range of large and small humans arguing, gardening, driving, swimming and playing beneath their nest and, as you can see, endlessly photographing their activities.

But the arrival of a crew of a dozen or so seed eaters in their territory was apparently intolerable.  A crested pigeon is the biggest prey sparrowhawks have been known to take, but we’ve seen for ourselves they’re not afraid to send cockies and cuckoos packing.  The cockatoos didn’t take off without a bit of argy bargy but in the end the diminutive predators won the day.

The flock retreated off to our place, and relieved their frustration with some light demolition work on the rotting pine tree in our backyard.  I assumed it was the parents that did the chasing off, but Stephen Debus, who spent a lot of time hanging out in the Bundaberg Botanical Gardens with a digital camera and a pair of young sparrowhawks, seems to think that the young ones like to chase away bigger birds that they couldn’t possibly eat, everything from egrets, darters and ducks to kestrels and even currawongs, their erstwhile enemies.

There’s been an exciting new development in the last couple of days: the littlies are trying their hand with disembowelling.  Young nestlings are fed gobbets of freshly plucked bird flesh, straight from mum or dad’s beak, but this youngster was doing his own kitchen prep.  It took him a while.  Given the eye-claw coordination on display here, it may be a few weeks before this one is hunting on its own.  It seems that taking dinner from the talons of parents mid-air (and maybe snacking on cicadas in between meals) is the next step towards independence.

From the vantage point of our neighbours’ pool, we’ve watched the fledglings practicing their short haul flights (and awkward landings), whine a lot and bicker over food.  In a truly rare sighting, judging from my experience with human children, I even saw one of them give in to his sibling’s relentless complaining and share a meal.

Or maybe what I saw was big sister muscling in on little brother?  Sparrowhawks have distinct sexual dimorphism, and apparently any idiot can tell the smaller males from the females.  Not this idiot!  I look forward to being enlightened by sharp eyed readers.

As you can tell from the recent posts in this blog, I have got just a little obsessed by our in-house raptors these last few months.  Maybe because our four serial killers have cleared the area of other distraction – the usual “house” birds.

No baby brush turkeys this year (hooray!) and the noisy miners have been mercifully silent. But the gorgeous satin bowerbirds have also been thin on the ground, the newly arrived whipbird disappeared suddenly without leaving a forwarding address, and I’ve heard very few of the chocks and clucks of the wattlebirds that make up the usual soundscape of our neighbourhood.

We have about six weeks, it seems, before the young sparrowhawks will disperse, looking for another neck of the woods with the requisite tall trees for nesting and plenty of small gormless birds to ambush from a secret spot in the canopy.

Will the adults stay after the brood has gone?   Will they leave and come back next year?  It seems no one really knows much about the movement of these secretive birds, despite their presence all over Australia, in every habitat but the driest of deserts.

And, if our lovely raptors do leave us, will our usual cast of feathered friends – the nectar drinkers, the seed and flower and lerp eaters – return?

Further references

Barnes, C.P. and Debus, S. (2014) “Observations of the post-fledgling period of the collared sparrowhawk (Accipeter cirrocephalus)” from The Sunbird (2014) 44(1): 12–23

Debus, Stephen (2012) Birds of Prey of Australia: a field guide, CSIRO Publishing

 

More sparrowhawk stories from our backyard

The end of the brush turkey plague? The battle of the baby birds….

There’s a collared sparrowhawk nesting in our garden…. or is it a goshawk…?

and the latest from our backyard: the teenagers start hunting for themselves… Sibling rivalry amongst the young serial killers….