There is a hungry hawk and two very lucky, traumatised, honeyeaters in my garden tonight.
All seemed quite peaceful as a pair of New Holland Honeyeaters went from blossom to blossom in my garden. They were feeding on Golden Robinia blossoms, not the banksias in these shots.
Neither they, nor I, realised a hungry hawk was watching them from the branches of a nearby eucalyptus tree.
I fairly often find a small carpet of feathers in my garden and wonder what has been taken, and which predator was responsible. Sometimes it’s tufts of fur but a surprising amount of that comes from rabbits fighting each other.
Everything seemed quiet and restful today until the peace was disturbed by a raptor flying full pelt at the honeyeaters. I’ve seen them strike before. It’s usually so quick that the prey wouldn’t have known what hit them but today the raptor missed with its first strike. Perhaps the honeyeater moved at just the right moment, or maybe the raptor is a youngster and still honing its skill. Whatever the reason the next few minutes were crazy. The raptor continued trying to capture a bird but was hampered by the branches. Neither of the honeyeaters flew to the bushland, perhaps they were too shocked or maybe they felt less vulnerable staying in the tree rather than crossing an open space to reach deeper cover. Finally the raptor flew away. I’m not absolutely sure whether it was a Brown Goshawk or a Collared Sparrowhawk – for a little more about that dilemma you could look at an earlier post: Goshawk Portrait
The New Holland Honeyeaters called loudly for several minutes after the attempted attack. It wasn’t their usual alarm call, more of an alarmed call. They’re doing it again right now, perhaps they’re sharing the information with each other again or maybe the hawk is still hungrily lurking.
Happy birding, Kim
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We also have a lot of New Holland Honeyeaters in our garden and often, especially lately which I suspect has something to do with nestlings somewhere, we have either a Nankeen Kestrel or Black-shouldered Kite hunting over the empty fields next door.
However, one day I saw out of the corner of my eye a great ruckus going on just on our lawn at the edge of our veranda and a brownish blur. I was not close enough to see and by the time I went to look, it was all over.
I don’t think it would have been either of the raptors I mentioned so maybe we had a hawk visitor but it’s never happened again.
Mostly, our local hunters seem to get rats and mice which they are welcome to.
Lovely that you have lots of New Hollands at your place too, they are such characters. They’ve been in the attack tree again over the weekend but, before eating, a sentinel spends quite a bit of time on the attack branch (which gives me the shivers) carefully looking around for any sign of the raptor. I wonder what caused your mystery ruckus! Doesn’t it make you wish you had spy cams set up just where you need them…
My heart is beating faster just reading about this close encounter of the bird kind!!! I’m glad that it didn’t get to eat one of them in front of your eyes.
So am I Tess, though I’ve seen similar things before. The worst was probably seeing a kookaburra swallow an Eastern Yellow Robin.
SUCH a lucky save. The hawk has to eat, but…
I am so often torn about encounters like these. We have lots of introduced species thriving in the city here. Pigeons and Indian Mynas mostly. It isn’t their fault though. We were the ones who introduced them.
I’m 100% with you on this EC. I felt for the hungry hawk but was pleased for the underdog/underbird. And the thought crossed my mind that it would be better if raptors preferred the taste of introduced birds, but as you say, it isn’t their fault they were introduced. Nature.
My goodness – what a thing to witness!
NHH are such a delight – I’m pleased the hawk had to look elsewhere…
It was pretty interesting Fiona! Wouldn’t it be good if raptors preferred the taste of feral species. Though, apart from blackbirds, I don’t have many feral species here so they might get a bit hungry.