Just about a week ago, a movement going past our kitchen window, caught my attention.
I moved out to where I could see where it had landed. It was a Brown Goshawk out on an open branch.
My first thought was to get my camera but even as I thought it, the bird took off and was gone.
This was only my second experience with this Goshawk. Some years earlier, my son had some birds breeding in a large outdoor cage.
The birds were often quite noisy but one particular morning, the noise from the cage was deafening.
We knew that something was wrong as we could see the birds flying frantically all over the cage with some even crashing into the side in panic.
My first thought was that a snake had managed to get inside as we had seen a large carpet snake a few days before.
I went down the stairs as quickly as I could, but stopped half-way down.
On the ground, looking into the cage after just flown at the wire was the Brown Goshawk pictured.
This bird would put fear into the heart of any bird as he was a vicious predator capable of capturing birds as large as domestic fowls.
Because of this, he is commonly known as a ‘Chicken Hawk’.
The photographer in me suddenly clicked into gear.
I went back up the steps, into the house and grabbed my camera. Then it was back down again with camera at the ready.
I don’t know if the Goshawk may have stunned itself when hitting the wire or whether it was wondering how to get at the birds inside but it was still in the same place as I aimed up the camera.
Even though the light wasn’t at the best angle and the background wasn’t the greatest, to get photos of this Goshawk, which I didn’t have before, was a real bonus.
