Troublesome waters...

Juvenile from the site in August 2015

Some worrying uncertainty over the Goshawk pair that I was fairly certain were starting to breed in early April.  Back then there was lots of calling from two birds, including several spells of increasingly excited screaming that I thought were likely to indicate copulation events.  But over many hours on three successive days (16-18th May) I have heard just occasional quiet k-k-k calls, mostly from different points around the middle sector of the valley, and no calls from two together.  Nor have I seen a Goshawk in flight.  Positive evidence, eg. the sound of a food delivery, can be gained in just a few seconds, but hours and hours of negative evidence, ie. failure to see or hear anything substantive, add up to nothing but a nagging worry!

On the 15th May there were severe thunderstorms and an intense hailstorm.  The storm turned out to have been far more intense around the town lower down, where the main valley meets the plain; flowers and fruits on orchard trees, grape vines, and the town centre's ornamental plants were destroyed by hailstones said to be as big as golfballs.  Given the general lack of evident Goshawk activity at the site, and the possible impact of hailstorms (I'm almost certain a breeding attempt at this site in 2013 was ended by an intense hailstorm in early June that year), I decided to make an exception to my usual rule of not visiting the nest during the breeding season, and approached the nest site close enough for a visual check.

With wind in the canopy, the network of torrents in tumultuous flow downhill, and the leaf litter soft and silent from rain, I'm confident that any bird present would not have heard me.  However, although this patch of forest is more open than most, with tall well-spaced trees and only sparse low growth to hinder movement, it is still necessary to approach to around 100 metres to find a sightline for binoculars downhill to the nest through the dense screen of intervening lower canopy leaves, and I doubt it is possible to do so unseen.

The next 15 minutes were increasingly tense, as there was no sign of a sitting bird, such as a tail projecting over the nest rim, and no sign of any green leaves having been added, and, at distance and in confusing light, it was too easy to turn any moving leaf shadow or any leaf turning brightly in the sun into some part of a hawk.  But eventually a distinct grey-brown crown raised slightly above the rim a couple of times and disappeared down again.  I could not see any more detail, certainly not an eye, so cannot be certain if the bird saw me, but strongly suspect she (?) had seen me through a gap in the woven sticks of the nest rim as I approached.  She sat tight, I hope on eggs or chicks, without alarming and there was no alarm from any partner perched unseen in the vicinity.

I retreated as unobtrusively as possible and climbed further up the valley to an open rock area from which it is sometimes possible to see birds in flight after they have left the nest site, and always possible to hear any vocalisations from the nest or nearby parts of the valley.  Nothing seen or heard, but I only had about three hours available, so could easily have missed visual or auditory evidence of any interaction.

Although I did not conclusively identify the bird occupying the nest as a Goshawk, I'm pretty sure it was, but now the comforting thought that a bird is in residence is turning into renewed worry about the fate of the assumed breeding attempt after another several hours of intense thunderstorms (but no hail) today, Thursday 19 May.