Hi,
I watched a group of 4 galahs taking it in turns to bait a male
Australian Hobby a few years ago. The Hobby was mating/trying to mate
with a female but a galah perched nearby would fly up and sqwaak and
flap right in the male Hobby's face until it had had enough and took off
and chased the galah at high speed through the trees for a short time
(about 10 to 20 seconds) before landing back next to the female for
another attempt. The galahs, easily able to outfly the hobby, would
land next to his/her mates and another would take its turn to harass the
Hobby and repeat the performance. Each galah had 3 or 4 goes while I
was watching. They weren't nesting nearby as far as I could see, and
didn't appear to be trying to drive the Hobby away, but certainly seemed
to be enjoying the whole experience. (A bit of anthropomorphising there
perhaps.) Funnily they weren't interested in the female Hobby at all.
She just remained perched in the same spot the entire time. The male
was successful at mating once but he spent most of the time chasing the
galahs.
Cheers
Andrew
On 19/10/2011 1:32 AM, Donald G. Kimball wrote:
When I was in Aus filming on my very last day of my 6 month parrot filming
adventure in February of 2009 I still needed one more species to have filmed
all Aussie Parrots (except for Night Parrot.. grin) My last was in the Blue
Mountains - Glossy-black Cockatoo.
I was about to leave the Tablelands Road area near Wentworth where I had
been searching for 3 days when I heard some throaty cries coming from way
way up in the air. Barely recognizable because they were just specks in the
sky, there were at least 2 Glossies chasing a large raptor (too far away to
identify it). They seemed bent on harassing and kept repeatedly swooping at
it and giving chase. The raptor seemed unnerved at times and it appeared
like they ushered it out of the area. Fortunately for me once it left they
spiraled down and then presented themselves to be filmed!
Has anyone else witnessed parrots harassing raptors? I had no idea that
they did this and it seemed a bit suicidal to me at the time!
Cheers!
Don Kimball
http://polytelismedia.wordpress.com/
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