Folks,
On the 28th March Mick Atzeni and I spent the morning with ARROW members from the Lowood/Coominya area birdwatching the Lockyer Valley wetlands. ARROW is a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation group working in the Lockyer and Brisbane Valley areas. The morning was fairly slow until we got to Pechey Swamp at Ropely. Here, within about 10 minutes we saw four species of raptor overhead with all four being present together at times during that short period. Species and numbers observed were a male and female Brown Goshawk, a single Little Eagle, four Pacific Bazas and a lone Whistling Kite. This was at about 11.15am. The 'icing on the cake' for the morning was the appearance of a low-flying Square-tailed Kite at Colquhoun's Road Dam about a quarter of an hour later. We got excellent views (and photographs) of the kite, as it passed low overhead and out across the dam.
The small flock of bazas was particularly interesting, as these birds appear to form flocks in SEQ in autumn. I have seen groups of up to a dozen birds at odd times over the years in this season. This habit was also observed by fellow QPWS employee Harriet Preece who recorded 15 of these hawks flying around and perched, at our Moggill office in mid March this year.
On this subject HANZAB, Vol.2, p.29 states, "Congregations are feature of post-fledging and non-breeding periods; birds confiding and conspicuous at such times; groups of up to 30 reported ... some records of smaller parties, usually 4-5, refer to family groups of adults and juveniles," and "... larger groups may be mixture of both ages or composed largely of adults, e.g. flock of 30 reported by Czechura (1985) almost entirely adults." Crouther also records feeding associations in this species of "a group feeding on grasshoppers in a garden."
Very interesting behaviour of one of my favourite birds.
Regards,
Rod Hobson
Raptors at Ropely
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