Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Brown Goshawk (adult)

Accipiter fasciatus didimus

Description:

Brown Goshawks are "medium-sized raptors (birds of prey). They have a brown head, slate-grey to brown upperparts with a red-brown collar across the upper nape of the neck, and finely barred underparts of red-brown with white. The rounded wings are dark brown to grey above and buff to reddish brown below with darker wingtips, and the long rounded tail is grey with dark bars. The long legs are yellow, with reddish brown feathering about the thighs. The eye is bright yellow." (Birdlife Australia)

Habitat:

Come in for a drink of water at Mankajarra Wetlands. (Check out this little video of the Brown Goshawk having a drink: https://youtu.be/LmKPcmj45zg ) This is towards the end of the dry season and in the build up to the wet season. Although the water level was low at the time, (it got much lower see pic 4 taken three weeks after the Brown Goshawk), there was still water and food due to the large amount of rain from the previous wet season (see pic 3 taken April 2017 just after the wet season) . Mankajarra has stands of Paperbark Trees (Melaleuca sp.) and other plants along the edges of the water. When the water level is high, the trees are in the water (see pic 3) and the birds have many more places to hide in and hunt from.

Notes:

This beautiful bird of prey had landed not far from where my mum and I were sitting but it seemed content with us there. Check out the little video and you can hear Paperbark Flycatchers (Myiagra nana) hassling it - they also had a young one in the trees where we were sitting. Earlier we had spotted an immature Brown Goshawk (see spotting: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/130... ) which had come down for a drink as well. "There are several subspecies, with the northern sub-species, didimus, being generally smaller and paler." (Birdlife Australia)

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

6 Comments

armadeus.4
armadeus.4 3 years ago

Updated video link in the habitat section because the old one wasn't working.

maplemoth662
maplemoth662 6 years ago

Your welcome, armadeus.4....

armadeus.4
armadeus.4 6 years ago

Thank you Hema Shah! I'm sorry about the video. Here is the link: https://vimeo.com/256282868 but I also added it in at the beginning of the habitat section. And I agree...beautiful indeed :)

armadeus.4
armadeus.4 6 years ago

Thank you maplemoth! They really are beautiful :)

Hema  Shah
Hema Shah 6 years ago

beautiful! Could not see the video though!

maplemoth662
maplemoth662 6 years ago

Four, beautiful photos....a beautiful Goshawk....

armadeus.4
Spotted by
armadeus.4

Western Australia, Australia

Spotted on Nov 26, 2017
Submitted on Feb 18, 2018

Related Spottings

Accipiter nisus Accipiter nisus Shikra Sparrowhawk

Nearby Spottings

White-throated Gerygone Rainbow Bee-eater Black-eared Cuckoo Purple-backed Fairy-wren (female)
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team