Hi Kevin,
Good notes there. About
the very distinctive white “blotches”,
that is a correct feature, though usually of the Collared Sparrowhawk. It shows in lots of photos but is never (?) shown in painted representations. This is not because it isn’t real, but because illustrators (nearly) always prefer to show birds in full grown,
non moulted or worn plumage. These white “blotches” are bases of feathers that are normally hidden by the tips of fully grown feathers above. Commonly the bases of body
feathers are white, grey or black.
It is generally mostly sea birds that are sometimes shown in illustrations with worn plumage and only when there is a specific point to be made.
My concern though is whilst I also think it is a Brown Goshawk based on the general proportions(including your guess of size), the rounded tail and the biggish
beak and face shape. It matches the immature stage. I haven’t seen those
white “blotches
so clearly before on a Brown Goshawk and had previously suggested it is a little described distinguishing point between the two. Maybe it isn’t, that is if your bird isn’t a Collared Sparrowhawk (I can’t be 100% sure it isn’t from those photos, certainly either
of these). It would make sense that both species show the feature but far more often showing on a Collared Sparrowhawk. Both species can turn up in any Canberra garden area, though the Collared Sparrowhawk appears a bit more common.
As for the prey, it is clearly a bird, not just from the foot but your photo shows the whole breast bone, which is obviously of a bird.
Philip
From: Canberrabirds [
On Behalf Of
Sent: Thursday, 10 June, 2021 4:42 PM
To: Canberra Birds
Subject: [Canberrabirds] Surprise Visitor - perhaps a brown goshawk?
This bird alighted on our brush fence mid-morning today (in “Emu Ridge”, Belconnen) and spent about 25 min eating what was the remains of a bird carcase (ie no feathers, but one avian foot clear) with quite a lot of the meat already (presumably)
consumed. These pix are side-on and front-on of the bird, with the side-on showing a vestige of the prey to the right of the tip of the beak. Probably due my camera colour setting, the colour in the pix is somewhat greyer than in reality, which was distinctly
brownish-grey. The pix are cropped and resized, to reduce from around 3 MB to just over 100 KB. If anyone would like to see them in better resolution, send me a personal email address and I’ll email the original pix. As a non-expert birder, I’m unsure which
bird it is. Looking at the images in “The Australian Bird Guide” (Menkhorst el al, 2017), the closest I can find is the brown goshawk (Juvenile, or perhaps somewhere between Juv and Ad?), except that neither the br. goshawk, nor any of the raptors shown in
the book, show the very distinctive white “blotches” on both upper sides of the bird – best seen in the front-on shot. There was no sunlight at that time, so the blotches can’t have been due to reflected sunlight. Clear features (using binoculars) were:
estimated (approx.) size about 450 mm head to end of tail; very yellow eye with black pupil; black tipped, curved beak; a narrow but distinct line of white on the tip of the tail; and – in reality – brownish rather than greyish darker ‘lines’ on the breast.
I apologise for taking your time with all this detail for what is probably instantly recognisable by all/most of you, but the white blotches have puzzled me. We’ve never had any raptor visit us in this way – and it returned very briefly just a few minutes
ago.
Kevin Bray
