[Photos] Eagle's Heritage IV

[moonvoice]

Well,
I'm having radiotherapy some time in the next few weeks.
Not sure how it will impact me but I know the side effects suck.
Ah well.

Here, have some black kites.
They're way more interesting.
Our fire birds of Australia.

(No really, they will pick up burning sticks
from bushfires,
and fly elsewhere to start new ones.
Firefighters fucking hate them).











When you only wanted one bird, but two came.



Outie



Yum!

Comments

[skyfiery]

These are so, so gorgeous. I always enjoy looking at the pictures you take.

You've piqued my curiosity - is it a learned/adapted behaviour for these black kites to start new fires elsewhere? Or it's just in their nature? Not understanding them, it seems like a rather strange behaviour for them to do.

[moonvoice]

It's possibly in their nature! Starting fires will flush out prey and create carrion, and Australia has been a desert for many tens of thousands of years, with grass fires and bushfires started by lightning strikes etc. even before Aboriginal Australians were here (but Aboriginal Australians are known to start fires for similar reasons, as well as to caretake the land). We don't know conclusively if they only started due to Indigenous folk, or if it started earlier than that, because obviously that's going back some 30,000 years.

So subsequently, in both Indigenous tales and contemporary times, the birds are 'fire birds' - taking sticks that have flame on them, and flying elsewhere and dropping the sticks in the hopes of lighting more fires. It's a big problem obviously, when they're trying to put out fires that are threatening lives/homes up North.

[silverjackal]

This something I did not know, and it is fascinating. One would think that staying away from fire would be instinctive, but not in this case. Remarkable!

[moonvoice]

National Geographic has documented it pretty well. They're also called 'firehawks.'They're also one of the only raptors in Australia to communally come together when feeding is rich.

" “I have seen a hawk pick up a smouldering stick in its claws and drop it in a fresh patch of dry grass half a mile away, then wait with its mates for the mad exodus of scorched and frightened rodents and reptiles,” wrote Waipuldanya Phillip Roberts in I, the Aboriginal, a 1964 autobiography of Roberts compiled by Australian journalist Douglas Lockwood.

“When that area was burnt out, the process was repeated elsewhere.”"

And this New Scientist article: Birds discovered fire before humans did. lol. I'm not sure that's true - it's a catchy article title (thanks New Scientist), but idk that they can ever prove conclusively how long they've been doing it for. Only that they do it and firefighters will actively chase them away from sites.

[skyfiery]

Thank you for the explanation and the various links. Like silverjackal said, it is fascinating. And learning something new is always fun, although, the reality of the fires and needing to contain them? Not so much.

[silverjackal]

Thank you for the links, and the information. :)

Kites in general are fiendishly clever (particularly if one considers they are raptors, who are by definition superb predators but not the brightest intellectual lights of the avian world) so I readily credit that they discovered this by observation. Various species are inveterate thieves and clever food-snatchers in different parts of the world, so this is just more evidence of their cleverness.

The natural world never ceases to astonish and delight me. Not that this is *good* behaviour in the larger multi=species consideration, but I'm sure it works splendidly for the kites.

[silverjackal]

Thank you for asking the question that immediately sprang to my mind.

[skyfiery]

You're welcome. :)