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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

August 22, 2021

Posted under

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.

sparrowhawk philosophical for close square

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 from below, perching on a twig

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 perched in a bare-branched liquidambar tree with a blue sky behind

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.

Kookaburra with lizard mouth open crop squaresmall

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

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

September 7, 2019

Posted under

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 by the campsite at Crosslands

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

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.

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

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mccnmatt

Posted on

December 17, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, breeding, hawks, nesting, predation, Predators, raptors, Uncategorized

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Motherhood on a windy day

Kid with mum distant 2 wide crop

Last year two collared sparrowhawk fledglings made it out of the nest high in our neighbour’s pine tree. This year it was just one. It’s been a lot quieter around here. No squabbling over snacks. No shuffling along branches side by side or pratfalls high in the canopy. No hightailing it after a sibling chasing a feed.

There’s been more adult and parent bonding, though. I rarely saw the adults and offspring together last year. But a few weeks ago, in windy weather, I got to see them hanging out low in the trees by our drive, sheltering from the tossing branches.

The juvenile looked, by turns, absurdly sleek and adult, and fluffy and completely gormless. Mum (or dad) seemed to be wrestling with the same conceptual problem – how grown up is this chick really?

Typically when the sparrowhawks catch a juicy white-faced honey eater or wattlebird chick, they call out, over and over again. I’m not sure if this the dinner bell for partner or offspring, or just triumphant territory claiming. They swiftly pluck the small bird they’ve caught and then gorily and fairly rapidly consume it.

But on this particular day, the adult hawk sat very still, prey gripped tightly, not taking even a bite. The youngster lurked awkwardly nearby, apparently not sure what to do next.

Kid with mum lower

Eventually mum (or dad), probably irked by the local amateur photographer, flew to a higher perch in the trees. But her prey, plucked, pink and gleaming, was still untouched.

Mum with prey 2

She was waiting. Eventually Junior flew up to join her.

Mum and kid with prey 2 story eye glint amended

He still seemed clueless about what she wanted him to do – as indeed I was. I’m willing to have a guess, though.

Adult sparrowhawks start by feeding their young little shreds of meat – the avian equivalent of pulled pork, I guess. I have heard the adults teach the fledglings to catch little birds mid air by dropping little snippets of prepared flesh to them on the wing. This youngster was definitely not in possession of that skillset.

Mum and kid with prey high 3

But I think dad (or mum) was trying to give the not-so-little little one a low-stakes chance to prep the dish for her (or him)self. But it certainly wasn’t happening on this occasion. Young blood had a good look, then stumbled past and took off, not even having a tiny go at flesh-tearing.

Juvenile from behind looking over shoulder crop

To be honest, I’m really pretty worried about this young one. I’ve been working from home a lot lately, and every morning, I hear sparrowhawk calls, and I race up the drive with my camera.

But it’s just the adult I see, calling and calling and calling.

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

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…?

Our sparrowhawk summer

The teenagers start hunting for themselves… Sibling rivalry amongst the young serial killers….

Sex, nests and dogfighting

Posted by

mccnmatt

Posted on

October 13, 2018

Posted under

Biodiversity, estuaries, fish, predation, raptors, waterways

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The very big fish

Mulloway on the rocks by Joe Crafts Bay

I’m a fish idiot. I see them all the time as I paddle around the Hawkesbury – grey, striped and translucent; foot long granddaddies heaving themselves out of water and hundreds of fry flicking the surface like tiny scaly synchronised swimmers . But don’t ask me what sort of fish they are, where they hang out, or anything else about them really. I don’t eat them, or hunt them, or keep them as pets so somehow my brain spontaneously ejects all information about them.

But it was hard to ignore a fish as big as this, splayed out on the riverside rocks near Joe Crafts Bay. Especially given the spectacle of the local white-bellied sea eagles trying very hard, but ultimately not hard enough, to carry this giant juicy snack to a convenient spot in the treetops.

Sea eagle flapping with fish b&w amend square

White-bellied sea eagle trying to fly off with a very big fish

This fish was too much even for the second largest raptor in Australia to carry off to eat in peace. Male sea eagles can weigh as much as 3.7 kilos, females half a kilo heavier, with wingspans of two metres or more. But this great big fish, I have been assured by expert fishermen, was a mulloway, a giant of coastal waters that can weigh 60 kilos and grow to two metres long. This one was a tiddler, maybe only two or three feet in length (I guess. But then I’m the kind of person who has to try two or three lids before successfully covering a saucepan, so I could be wrong). But the sea eagle still couldn’t wrangle it safely into the trees. Trust me, it tried. Take off was aborted several times. And then a boat with some noisy humans came and anchored inconveniently close to this enormous and tempting snack.

Blue boat

The sea eagle flew off, disgruntled. But it didn’t fly far. Or more to the point, they didn’t fly far: in fact, there were three sea eagles keeping an eye on this feed – a pair and a youngster I labelled “Itchy”.

Itchy the sea eagle

Pair of white-bellied sea eagles waiting for seafood breakfast

The boat moved along, after a while – obviously no other mulloway were coming up from the deep that morning. Before the sea eagles got wise, someone else decided on seafood for breakfast.

Australian raven casing out a great big fish

Raven checking for sea eagle attach

At last, a nibble of mulloway

The raven and its mate tried to keep the great big fish to themselves, but in the end, might is right on the river it seems.

Pair of Australian ravens chasing a sea eagle

I’m not sure if Itchy got a look-in, but the sea eagle pair both got a decent meal, taking it in turns to run the gauntlet of the river-traffic (including a nosy kayaker with a zoom lens). One bird ate warily while the other stood guard in a nearby tree.

Sea eagle tearing the flesh of the fish

A nibble of entrail

Planning the next bite

One member of the sea eagle pair eating…

While the other stands guard.

White-bellied sea eagle enjoying mulloway for breakfast

They’d hardly made a tiny dent in the corpse of the mulloway by the time a second boat came along to break up the party. I’m sure another meal happened later in the day, but I try to be out of the water by the time the roar of powerboat engines drowns out the whizz and plop of yak-fishermen casting. One less bothersome boatie for the sea-eagles to worry about.

Boat off Joe Crafts Bay

I’m sure this mulloway has a story. If the white-bellied sea-eagles couldn’t take off with this whopper fish, it’s hard to imagine how they could have caught it and lifted it from the water. How did this beauty end up, forlorn, on the river-side rocks? Surely no human fisherfolk would leave such a prize behind? My fishing friends tell me that the great mulloway, jewels on its back glimmering in the water, is a fish to dream about and pursue – after dark, in the deepest holes in the river. And good eating too.

Stocks of these big fish crashed by the early noughties, burdened by commercial and amateur fishing. T he minimum catch size for recreational fishing went up from 45 to 70 cm long, so maybe this one was caught but found short of the mark (like most of the mulloway hooked by recreational fisherfolk). Released, perhaps, already wounded, destined to wash up on shore, breakfast for the ravens and the eagles.

Sea eagle portrait dark background cropped.jpg

Thanks to Denis Crowdy and Peter Doyle for fish identification and mulloway tales.

Other posts about the raptors in our beautiful backyard

Sibling rivalry as the young collared sparrowhawks in our neighbour’s pine tree learn to hunt…

The world’s fastest bird catches a meal

Three whistling kites, two sad islands

Encounters with the local eagles

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mccnmatt

Posted on

August 24, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, hawks, Native birds, raptors, Uncategorized

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Sex, nests and dog fighting

Adult collared sparrowhawk thinking about reproducing

The sparrowhawks are back! And they’re ready to make babies. How do I know?… well (ahem)… I’ve been watching. But not taking photos. No, that would be weird.

That said, I have captured the occasional intimate post-coital moment. It seems raptors don’t have a cigarette after coupling – they gnaw on raw flesh and collect sticks. All in all, probably healthier options.

Post-coital moment. Larger female (left) having a snack, male twig hunting.

Watching the pair collecting twigs to renovate the nest in the neighbour’s pine tree has been quite entertaining. Collared sparrowhawks are such poised and elegant birds. But with their finely built frame and long delicate claws they’re not natural construction workers. Their technique seems to be to find some dead branches and leap awkwardly around on them hoping for the best, with a bit of light gnawing thrown in for good measure.

Sparrowhawk biting leaping on twigs crop

Sparrowhawk trying to create bits and pieces of stick for a nest

Sparrowhawk awkwardly hunting sticks

Sparrowhawk trying to grab a twig

Sparrowhawk clocks the currawong

Photobombed by the currawong

And whatever the sparrowhawks are trying to do, the pied currawongs are hanging around trying to stop them doing it.

It didn’t really surprise me to see a gang of six or seven currawongs loitering threateningly while a sparrowhawk tried to pluck and eat their breakfast. I’ve seen the hawks move from tree to tree two or three times trying to get a few minutes without harassment. But why would currawongs want to disrupt nest building? Especially when I’m pretty sure at least one or two of them got take-away chick from that very same nest last summer.

Currawong approaching pine tree distant square

Nevertheless, the sparrowhawks have persisted, chasing off the currawongs whenever they can and fleeing them when necessary. Aerial dogfights are a regular feature around here at the moment – the hawks chasing away cockies and king parrots; currawongs divebombing magpies and hawks; and of course me legging it after everything feathered with my camera. Not that the sparrowhawks seem to care about the activities of the humans down below. All the critical action is happening in the canopy or the sky.

Sparrowhawk gnawing

Male king parrot like the one the hawks scared off yesterday

Sparrowhawk with twig stretched foot crop sharper crop

Collared sparrowhawk with twig heading back to do some nest renovation

Magpie at sunset

Success: a twig found!

The nest site

Collared sparrowhawk near the nest

More sparrowhawk stories

Death and sibling rivalry

Our sparrowhawk summer

Battle of the baby birds

Welcome back, beautiful stranger

A first glimpse of the sparrowhawks

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mccnmatt

Posted on

January 26, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, Biodiversity, Brush turkeys, Climate change, Death, national parks, nesting, predation, raptors, Seasons

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Wildlife reboot: birds 2.0

Another January, and another trip to Ganguddy, on the western site of Wollemi National Park. Same marvellous geology, same refreshing dam water, same hot weather.

Clamorous reed warbler with nesting material

Male musk duck – a resident here

Moorhen family

The campsite at night

Colours of dusk with hills trees and reeds

Egg and rock view to branch creek at dusk

White faced heron hunting

Good reed reflection and swamp hen cropped

One of many dragonflies

But some things were different this year. After the stupendously dry winter, the eucalypt forest was parched, the undergrowth sparse and the leptospermum flowers of last year’s visit few and far between. We found a patch of sphagnum moss perched in a bowl of sandstone boulders so dry it crunched underfoot.

One very hot white throated tree creeper

Eastern water dragon

Twerking wombat

A “green” satin bowerbird panting in the heat

We spotted plenty of lizards, and the diggers were out in force – lyrebirds wandering through the camp as they tried to scratching their way down to moisture and a wombat turning up to twerk on a picnic bench. But up in “kingfisher alley”, just before the Cudgegong River disappears into the reed beds, there were fewer blue and green flashes by the water.

Around the camp site, the bowerbirds and treecreepers panted in the heat. Apart from the ubiquitous reed warblers, there seemed fewer birds altogether. No sign of the friarbird teenagers of last year, and even the baby swamp hens seemed thin on the ground.

You have to wonder what it takes to change ecosystems irrevocably. How many dry winters before the old inhabitants decide living and breeding here is just too tricky? And who would move in to fill their place?

Back at Berowra after the trip, there are changes in the garden too… surprising ones.

We knew we’d be losing the sparrowhawks soon enough, but the family has dispersed in an unexpected order. The adults disappeared off the scene weeks ago, and by the time we made it home with our ridiculously overloaded vehicle and small and ancient fleet of boats, the siblings had parted too. There’s just one young’un now. He seems lonely.

Juvenile collared sparrowhawk with prey

Calling for the missing sibling

There’s a constant plaintive calling from the trees out back, that seems to intensify when he has prey on hand. I’m not quite sure if he’s warning his imaginary sibling off or calling him to come and share a meal.

And that’s not the only shift in the soundscape around here. The sparrowhawks have cut a swathe through the bird population on the premises. Baby brushturkey numbers have fallen from previous plague proportions, noisy miners are few and far between and the “house” birds of yesteryear – red and little wattlebirds – are now just occasional visitors.

Red wattlebird

Little wattlebird

But as the numbers of resident raptors has dropped, a new set of critters have settled in. Lewin’s honeyeaters which we’ve only seen once or twice in the backyard over the last seven years, have made our backyard their new home. And we also appear to have acquired some brown thornbills, a raptor snack food if ever there was one. And the local eastern spinebills, another tasty morsel for a sparrowhawk, are spending more time around here too.

The only explanation I have for the change of personnel is that the hawks have bumped the notoriously territorial wattlebirds, leaving the field open for new arrivals.

Eastern spinebill

Brown thornbill

Lewin’s honeyeater

I’m pretty happy to have a new set of birds in the garden. My dream scenario, I have to admit, would be to order up some songbirds that are a bit easier on the eye. My birdwatching brother puts Lewin’s in a honeyeater “bin taxon” of pretty similar and drab looking birds it’s hardly worth distinguishing between. Cruel, perhaps, but fairly accurate.

So, why not some new holland honeyeaters, for instance – gorgeous looking locals. Or (still, my beating heart!) what about some pardelotes? Just one or two?

Spotted pardelote

New holland honeyeater

On the other hand, it’s possible that all the vibrantly coloured small birds in the neighbourhood have been made into multicoloured meals over the past three months by our family of raptors. After all, there’s got to be some evolutionary reason for all those SBBs*.

*note: this is a throwaway remark absolutely unsupported by any science.

Previous posts about Ganguddy

A bit about Ganguddy’s history and geology – and a little Tim Low on the side

Snakes versus whining teenagers – last year at Ganguddy

More on our sparrowhawk summer

Death and sibling rivalry

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

Further reading

Stephen Garnett, Donald Franklin, Glenn Ehmke, Jeremy VanDerWal, Lauren Hodgson, Chris Pavey, April Reside, Justin Welbergen, Stuart Butchart, Genevieve Perkins and Stephen Williams (2013) Climate change adaptation strategies for Australian birds: Final Report, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility

Office of Environment and Heritage, Premier’s Department (2011) New South Wales Climate Impact Profile Technical Report: Potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity

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mccnmatt

Posted on

January 2, 2018

Posted under

Backyard birds, Death, Native birds, predation, raptors, Uncategorized

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Death & sibling rivalry

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.

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.

Do the tail feather

And again

…neck roll….

… leg stretch…

… 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.

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.

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.

The lucky sibling with significantly less lucky white cheeked honeyeater

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

Keeping an eye out

Juvenile with head turned mouth open amended

My dinner…

All mine…

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.

Juvenile sparrowhawk protecting its prey

No time for a hungry sibling

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.

Settling in for a good plucking

Closeup of a honeyeater’s insides

Sparrowhawk eating honeyeater

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

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

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mccnmatt

Posted on

December 19, 2017

Posted under

breeding, Death, egg laying, Garden trees, nesting, raptors

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Sparrowhawk summer

Adult sparrowhawk telling the kids that dinner is on its way

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.

A juvenile sparrowhawk watching the demolition work with interest

Cockies in retreat

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.

Juvenile ripping a small bird to bits

… but keeping an eye on me at the same time

Fledgling sparrowhawk still aspiring to elegance

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.

Oops. Failure to land.

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.

Red wattlebird in times gone by.

The usual bird visitors enjoying sunset over Sam’s creek

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.

Young sparrowhawk in hunting position

Adult sparrowhawk hiding in the canopy ready to pounce

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….