Hi Laurie,
We have had a CCTV camera set high up next to a sea-eagles' nest since
April. We were able to record all activity at the nest up until about three
weeks ago when we lost the picture. We were able to gather an enormous
amount of information from the recordings during the nest re-building stage.
We observed the male bird bringing fish (over 50!) and other prey items to
the nest for the female over a period of 7 weeks. I had actually noted down
in which talon the birds were carrying prey items to and from the nest
(where prey was visible in one talon). These are the figures:
Male arrived at nest with prey item in left talon: 28 times
Male arrived at nest with prey item in right talon: 24 times
Male departed nest with prey item in left talon: 6 times
Male departed nest with prey item in right talon: 5 times
Female arrived at nest with prey item in left talon: 1 time
Female arrived at nest with prey item in right talon: 1 time
Female departed nest with prey item in left talon: 5 times
Female departed nest with prey item in right talon: 8 times
Clearly there does not seem to be much of a preference with these birds (at
least at the nest). The male also brought very large items to the nest in
both talons, once with a grey-headed flying-fox (still alive), once with a
sub-adult silver gull and once with a very large mullet.
I haven't yet had the motivation to go through all of the 250+ occasions of
them carrying sticks to the nest and the 150+ occasions of them carrying
leaves to the nest to record talon preference!
Some interesting clips from the CCTV camera can be seen on the BA website
at:
http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/the-organisation/eaglecam.html
These include the flying-fox incident, a very bizarre piece of footage of
the male bird getting his talon caught in the nest and hanging upside down
motionless for over a minute and a half and several clips of co-operative
and not so co-operative behaviour at the nest.
The birds are currently sitting on eggs. We have set up a temporary camera
at ground level whilst we resolve the technical issues of the CCTV and this
footage can be viewed live at the Birds Australia Discovery Centre at
weekends (details on the website) along with the previously recorded clips.
Hopefully the CCTV will be back up and running by the time the egg(s) have
hatched.
Cheers,
Jon Irvine
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of L&L Knight
Sent: 13 July 2009 16:06
To: Birding Aus
Subject: Do raptors have a preferred foot?
It is well known that parrots prefer to grasp objects in their left
feet. I observed a Black Kite holding its food in its right foot and
wondered if raptors have a consistent preference as to which foot they
used for grasping objects.
Regards, Laurie.
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