The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Hi guys

To be fair I don't own a DSLR, but lots of people do, and it is possible to digi-scope soaring raptors at least, cf: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j55y2_uLP ... annel_page . I just want to reiterate the point that poorly-seen Goshawks probably aren't Goshawks.

I asked for a good photo. I don't doubt that Steve's bird was a Goshawk based on his field description but if the image was submitted on its own (and I have to presume the scan is a reflection of the quality of the image) - still online at http://www.lincsbirdclub.co.uk/rare_birds/goshawk.htm then I don't think it would be accepted purely on the merit of the photo i.e. I don't believe you can conclusively rule out Sparrowhawk from that one image alone. Features such as size can not be judged and 'pigeon-chested' is a rather subjective term. What about this one: http://www.hawar-islands.com/blog/media ... oshawk.jpg this one: http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=s ... e_id=24091 and this one: http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=s ... e_id=20954 Their bird was however a juv. so it would have been a nice streaky beast like this one http://www.lincsbirds.co.uk/album/displ ... 14&pos=150 Anyone wanting to debate this should refer back to the whole Ivory-billed Woodpecker scandal and every online attempt to identify a bird from poor-quality images.

Roger - to clarify my position again - I don't believe Goshawks breed in (North) Lincs - otherwise you would have seen more than three Goshawks in the county, a fact that I'm not intending to dispute. My 'university research' has nothing to do with the status of Goshawk in Lincs (or Black Kites for that matter), I'm as qualified as you to comment and all the information I source is available on the web and in reports. I would not however be that inclined to believe in gamekeeper's tales.

So, lets get to the meat of the argument, you alluded to UFOs, - have you seen a UFO in Lincs, or possibly been abducted at any point whilst engaged in raptor fieldwork?

Yours in suspense

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

Just for the record it was my wife and myself who reported the Goshawk at MSQ on 17/1/09. It was watched in a Leica telescope on 48 x zoom for in excess of 1 and half minutes in good clear light. At one point it was flying very close to 2 Common Buzzards and allowed for good size comparison both by length and wing size. The wing span being almost same as Buzzard whereas a female Sparrowhawk is much less.
Its longer wings and shorter tail resembled the classic cross shape. It had a steady but slow
powerful flight with a number of almost laboured wing beats followed by short glides on a steady straight flight path with no drop in height. All the Rooks in the area flew off at a great height which is typical behaviour rather than mobbing it as with a Sparrowhawk.
I have watched Goshawks for over 30 years mainly in Derbyshire and have seen many in that time. I was also told about 3 or 4 years ago by a well known and respected RSPB full time warden that a pair of Goshawks had bred just across the Humber.
Just because there is no photographic evidence, and I do not take photographs anyway, records should not be discounted so readily especially by academics.
It is a strange thing but the majority of birds can and do actually fly and being unable to read do not always appear where the books say they should! How else does one explain locally Albatross, Green Heron, Stone Curlew, White Stork etc etc all within a short hop of MSQ. It is not all down to weather conditions, birds do move around for reasons of their own and not just to fit scientific textbooks.
If you do not see the bird do not knock it!!!!

Hi Alan

Not being a regular at MSQ, neither necessarily a regular reader of all the contributions to the forum from that region I was not specifically 'knocking' your sighting. I guess you are aware of these heavyweight Goshawk debates that occur every few years? They always make for a good thought-exercise and have been known to stray into more esoteric matters. Certainly no personal offence intended to any protagonists.

Your description of a bird comparable in size to a Common Buzzard, obviously rules out Sparrowhawk and would pertain to a very large female Goshawk. The rest of your description isn't that helpful in narrowing down the identification cf 'cross shape' - were you able to age the bird - was it streaked or barred underneath? Were you able to get a good look at the head pattern - which might confirm the sex? What was the ground colouration of the bird? Your experience with Goshawks in Derbyshire should facilitate your commenting on these features. I'm surprised that the bird wasn't mobbed by corvids, I have often seen crows 'respectfully' mobbing Goshawks, indeed corvids tend to mob any raptors which they are not familiar with. Hence 20 years ago when a Buzzard turned up in Lincs the crows really gave it hell, nowadays they barely bat an eyelid. Anyway, I wouldn't place any weight for the identification of the bird on the behaviour of heterospecifics. If there were multiple large raptors in the sky at once I think corvids would be understandably cautious....

The old adage of 'anything can turn up anywhere' is a little misleading. The vagrants you cite are all long-distance migrants, one is a disorientated seabird from the wrong hemisphere (and was tracked across 3 European countries), the second is a Transatlantic vagrant whose occurrence is almost certainly weather-related and the final two are both overshoots - species that have continued migrating north having failed to turn off their migratory impulses. All have also been photographed in the county. Very fortuitously in the case of the albatross. Goshawks on the other hand have relatively low rates of long-range dispersal and thus do not occur frequently as vagrants. Finding a Black Kite or Red-footed Falcon in Lincs is much easier than finding a Goshawk. Despite the fact that Goshawks breed many orders of magnitude closer. For this reason their eastward spread has been painfully slow.

Sure, not everyone has access to a camera; but in the case of nominally difficult-to-identify species, single-observer records are always going to be treated with some scepticism. Even very experienced high profile observers make mistakes on a near annual basis, we are only human. Photo-documentation permits objective analysis of a record without a subjective description. I'm sure everyone has found themselves in the same boat, I certainly have. Unlike these vagrants, Goshawks are regularly reported in many parts of the UK - such as Lincs where no breeding population is known to exist and are often seen only by a fortunate subset of observers. When no documentation is forthcoming there will also be a certain sub-set of observers that will pour some scorn on such reports. Goshawks are no different from any other raptor - if you can find the same Rough-legged Buzzard day in and day out then (and with a little more effort) you ought to be able to find the same Goshawk. They aren't undertaking long-range movements cf. ringing records because everything we know about their biology suggests otherwise.

With Goshawks apparently breeding so close then we might expect the odd dispersing juvenile or even the odd wandering adult in winter. The small number of records we get is thus to be expected. My only points are 1) it surprises me that not one of these wandering birds has apparently ever been twitchable (when this is often the case elsewhere) and 2) that no-one has photographed one of these individuals and finally 3) the fact that records are not uniformly distributed between observers spending a comparable amount of time in the field. Can anyone come up with a species of similarly comparable status?

cheers

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

One of the problems certainly at MSQ is that it is not the most watched reserve and many of its visitors are people just out for a walk rather than birdwatching. A slight comparison in raptors being missed in particular at MSQ is Red Kite. Over the last couple of years myself and others have seen an odd bird passing over the reserve, the last one displayed close to the hide for about 5 minutes. However this is still not by any means a regular sight and most will not have seen one there but they do exist.
With regards to mobbing behaviour between corvids and goshawk can I refer you to ' The Raptors of Europe and The Middle East ' by Dick Forsman who is one of the foremost experts in the world on raptors. There on page 257 he clearly states ' Corvids react very differently towards Sparrowhawks and Goshawks: Sparrowhawks are often chased and mobbed in flight, whereas at the appearnce of a Goshawk the birds flee in panic and climb as high as possible '. This was something I was also told many years ago by Sir Peter Scott and forever stuck in my memory so it is not something newly discovered.
I did not go into specific plumage identification as I am aware of all the debates and the Doubting Thomas's out there . Suffice it to say I know what I saw.
One last point is that there are now many more records of Goshawk coming from Blacktoft Sands, all from very reliable and experienced birders including staff members. These are often seen heading inland from across the Ouse over towards the back fields and from there it is as the Goshawk flies a very short distance into North Lincolnshire.

Hi Alan

Red Kites are considerably more obvious than Goshawks and do tend to get tracked quite well as they move around, there are plenty of photos of them (including on this site) and tend to get seen by a cross-section of observers. There are typically easily twitchable - certainly more so than a more secretive Accipiter.

As you state you have no need to justify what you saw and certainly need not feel stigmatised for claiming a Goshawk! You offered a description of the circumstances and I wanted to clarify that I do not think some of the description is useful in assessing the record. To return to mobbing - this is a complex and context-specefic behaviour. For instance I have never seen Cranes mobbed by crows in Broadland but I have found birds on the North Coast with an entourage of 70 Rooks! Corvids are familiar with Cranes in broadland - this shows that the response to mobbing is not necessarily innate. Back to the specific Goshawk example, corvids do mob Goshawks; I don't want to play ornithologist top trumps but if you turn to the plate of Hooded Crow in your Collins Guide (written by the some of the foremost field ornithologists in Europe) you will see a juv. Goshawk being mobbed by a pair of crows, the text makes note of a species-specific mobbing vocalisation that crows use when mobbing Goshawks. Corvids are, after all one of the most important prey species for Goshawks. If you don’t believe that then here are some images of Goshawks being mobbed by corvids: http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=s ... e_id=21283
http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=s ... re_id=8044
http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=s ... e_id=21284
Goshawks are primarily ambush hunters, by mobbing a Goshawk corvids reduce the chance of the former making a kill, obviously at some potential risk to themselves. During an active hunt however the corvids will obviously try and rise above the hawk - much in the same way as many escaping prey species will do. The more corvids there are the bolder they will become... check out these amazing images... http://www.tarsiger.com/gallery/index.p ... 0&lang=eng This is completely different from their reaction to Sparrowhawks which they are easily able to bully as they are not a potential prey item. My point is, whether or not they are being mobbed by corvids is not helpful as an identification feature, the fact that the birds are considerably bigger than the mobbing corvids obviously would be! Safe identification of extralimital Goshawks should rely not only on jizz characteristics – which are subjective and vary according to conditions like the sex of the bird, the weather, when it last ate (distended crops on Sparrowhawks can give them a Gos-type feel) and the bird’s intentions (loafing around or hunting) but on a critical evaluation of the bird’s plumage characteristics.

Cheers

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

I have just come in and not read alan hudsons submissions yet,because i could not get past gamekeepers tales,for christ sake-who do you think you are!!!!you are well out of order!!!!gamekeepers round scunny know when they have a goosey on their patch not the common as muck sphawk,the other day you mentioned-oh sorry facts and fiqures beats speculative sightings-how dare you!!!im sorry i cannot take anymore of your total crap.
Roger.
i have now read read the whole argument and you state basically alan has not met the whole criterea demanded by you,he and I have more experience and John harriman,who you Conviently forgot about,on Goshawks than you,e.g sightings of in the breeding areas and in lincs,you are now totally wrong-live with it!!!here comes gpc!!go for it.
rog.

Roger

Re-read what I have written, I do not doubt your three records of Goshawks, nor Alan's nor John's. All I have done is come up with an argument that would suggest that a) Goshawk probably does not breed in Lincs (pending further information) and b) there are many strange idiosyncracies in the pattern of occurrence which may explain why some people have problems with the species' status in Lincs. You seem to be prejudging my experience - which for the record runs to 14 species of Accipiter including gentilis in all plumges, at all times of year, right across the Holarctic.

cheers

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

I think the main protagonists will struggle to reach a concensus when the structured, factual argument from a professional ornithologist is described as "total crap". Like Edmund, I saw Goshawks on the Dennis Estate at Stenigot in the late 1980's - the only time I have seen them in the county

hi alex and Stuart ,
Im not retracting a single word,no way,and if 35 years of birding dosent stand up for much especially when birds of prey are my favourites,having spent god knows how many hours/weeks/months/years scanning and studying raptors then that must be close to "proffesional whatever",then i give in.
Now you state Alex you do not dismiss our records after all,do not be surprised if i do not believe that statement entirely.
the gamekeepers ive met round scunny on the whole are quite up on birds in their local patch and when something different enters their domain they soon notice.you also state with a little more effort goshawks might be encountered,to be honest in my experience not many birders spend hours scanning for raptors like i dave,steve routledge ,alan and carol and maybe gpc and to a certain extent Canadian Mike do,so that narrows down the chances oseeing one,the amount of raptors ive had at msq that other birders have not seen include,rough legged buzzard,Montaques Harrier,possible booted eagle.,goshawk until alans,2 ospreys,instead of one,first to see,15 buzzards in one day,honey buzzards,no other person has yet seen the latter,etc etc.
what the hell,
lets agree to differ,gonna find some more waxwings being attacked by goshawks who want the damm berries all to their selves!!!
Yours,
Roger.

Good God - what a debate. I'm pleased that the only Goshawk (I think!!!!????) I ever saw was at Strines was about 10 years ago

Hi Stuart
cc Edmund

Were the Stenigot Goshawks ever seen well enough to see if they had any remnant jesses or rings? With the birds only staying a season was foul play ever suspected? As everyone knows, the British population was founded on released birds, with circa 20 birds per year entering the wild (as falconer's escapes) between 1970 and 1989 and a further 30-40 birds deliberately released annually in small groups (Brown & Grice 2005 [Birds in England]). Considering these birds were occupying a relatively small woodland complex at Stenigot (circa 300ha?) and their position on the east coast far from the main population centres (then principally in extensive upland forests), I would guess that these were probably local escapes or (a lot more unlikely) genuine Scandinavian colonists -rather than 1st or 2nd generation descendents of released birds that had spread east. Although the Scandinavian theory does seem fanciful, the small number of immigrant birds recorded in-off on North Sea Coasts, the signature of colonisation of SE England (away from the main Gos populations) and the one British foreign recovery (the Norwegian bird controlled at Theddlethorpe) do add weight to this theory....

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

A very interesting thread!
I seem to recall there was an (autumn?) coastal record in the Rimac/Sea View area a few years ago with the bird apparently roosting for the night at Sea View. I'm sure some Lincs birders caught up with the bird & I can remember seeing a photo of the bird on here (cant remember how detailed the photo was though). John Walker will no doubt be the best person to ask on this.

It would be certainly be interesting to know if any Goshawk records have been submitted to LBC over recent years - think it would make interesting reading (though I obviously accept full details of any such records cant be released & some would no doubt have been Sparrowhawks!)

regards

Chris

Okay let us all give in and accept at no time past or present have any of us ever seen a Goshawk and if we had it must have belonged to a falconer. Perhaps next time a figment of our imagination flies over MSQ we ought to follow the old time adage and shoot it on the principle that ' what is shot is history and what is not is a mystery'.
I do not generally submit official records to the County Recorder but if I did I would have mentioned its greyish - brown upperwing seen when it banked, and the clean white underparts. Also that there was not as much barring on the underside of its primaries when considered to a Sparrowhawk. I would have also mentioned the head pattern which could be clearly seen even from a distance though not as distinct as it can be on a male , its head being on a long neck which showed beyond its wings ( this makes the classic cross shape). I would not have forgot its broad tail either with a rounded tip.
Having watched them for many years this seemed to fit the usual characteristics I associate with them but as clearly they have and never will be seen in Lincolnshire I must be wrong. Will concentrate in future perhaps on Kestrels!

If there are any Goshawk out there who can add their five-bobs worth please step forward

Is GPC away???????

Max

_________________
GETTING OLD HAS IT'S ADVANTAGES BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT THEY ARE lol

One wonders how common Goshawk records are in Lincs - I suspect that few birders are now 'brave' enough to report them, for fear of ridicule and/or disbelief from their peers. However I agree with Alex, that if we had a pair (or pairs) established in Lincs they would be much more regularly seen than they appear to be. We always seem to have just rumours - even from Gamekeepers in the south of the county - but we never seem to be able to confirm these.
The few documented/accepted records would suggest that they rarely occur in Lincs as either rare continental migrants, even rarer dispersing birds from neighbouring counties, or as 'lost' falconers birds. The latter should not be overlooked as the Goshawk is a very commonly kept and popular falconers bird in England, and clearly escapes are regular. I personally know of two occasions of escapes in Lincolnshire, one lost north of Donington on Bain in late 1986 and one at Grantham in 1990. The former stayed in the area for some time as the falconer told me that on several subesquent occasions when 'flying' another of his birds the 'lost' bird came and interacted with his other bird; the Grantham one disappeared without trace. Fortunately the Goshawk is one of the handful birds to remain on the 2008 revised Schedule 4 and all UK birds should be marked with a DEFRA ring - though these rings are small and a good view would be needed to confirm that one was not present. (Bear in mind that one of the main reasons for Goshawk to remain on Schedule 4 is due to the continued threat of falconers taking birds from the well known sites which appears to be one of the reasons why the UK population is not expanding)

Perhaps we should grant an amnesty against disputing records to encourage more possible sightings ? On this forum....? Perhaps not - I just live in hope, as a ringer, that one day I'll have the talon marks as proof!

Alan