Another Goshawk - Honey-buzzard encounter

Honey-buzzard above, Goshawk below,
showing general spatial relationship
during flight. 17.vii.18. N Apennines.

A few days ago (17 July 2018) I was sitting on a high rock up on the watershed ridge, about half a kilometre from my usual 'white scar' watchpoint, and a little higher, with a panoramic view over the main valley here.  I was looking primarily for Honey-buzzards in flight, in a period when breeding birds should be making food deliveries to their nest.  Goshawks were somewhat 'off the radar' because I had not seen or heard one, apart from the distant glimpse reported in the previous post, since late June.

Just after noon I spotted a distant raptor as it rose above the skyline, then a second close below it.  The first was certainly a Honey-buzzard, a very pale bird circling unusually briskly.  My impression of the second was of another medium-large raptor, dark above and pale below, and showing a large white area around the tail base which immediately suggested the  untertail coverts of a Goshawk, always so eye-catching when flared.  The distance, estimated between 1 and 1.5 km, did not allow me to see much detail through 8x binoculars (I don't use a scope), but the second bird was not moving as might be expected for a Goshawk and I realised it was carrying some substantial prey item, perhaps mainly white.  It soon moved back down below the skyline and flew fast but with laboured wingbeats as it descended out of sight into the head of one of the smaller side valleys.  The Honey-buzzard followed the same general course, keeping 50-100 metres above the second bird.

The narrative I immediately concocted in my head was that the second bird was a Goshawk that had snatched a recently hatched Honey-buzzard chick from the nest, and was carrying it back to its own young (Goshawks seem consistently to breed relatively late here, with young flying in late July).

This little story is entirely plausible, but I did not see the actual predation event, and the images I got of the distant birds behind heat haze certainly do not contain any useful details on the hawk's prey, so I'll never know for sure if my script is accurate.  Perhaps the proximity of first and second birds was just chance?  More prosaically, perhaps the Goshawk prey was someone's white chicken?

Nevertheless, I'm almost convinced: I have never seen a Honey-buzzard follow a Goshawk while flying in such an erratic and seemingly agitated way, surely (?) consistent with being a recently-deprived parent.

The Goshawk with prey, earliest image on far left; far right image shortly before descent to woods.  Dangling legs belong to prey.  Orange line added to images indicates level of the Goshawk tail (not always clear in these small images).  17.vii.2018. N Apennines.

The one secure inference to be made from these observations is that a pair of Northern Goshawks is breeding successfully not very far from the nest site of recent seasons (assuming that the hawk is unlikely to carry a large prey item far unless there is an active nest to provision).  I could not tell for sure if the Goshawk went down into the upper part of what I've started to call 'Goshawk Valley', perhaps 250  metres or so further up from the more usual site, or the nearby upper part of the valley on the far side of its most prominent bounding ridge.  And so far as I know there is no potential watchpoint, elevated and unwooded, from which to observe either location!

(this incident also outlined at https://honey-buzzard.blogspot.com )

Following a Honey-buzzard, found a Goshawk

Adult male Northern Goshawk, 29.vi.2018; wingtips look
atypical because of regrowing inner primaries.

Several recent visits to my usual watchpoints here in this quiet side valley in the North Apennines have been 'no show' for the Goshawk.  But the overall ratio of eight sightings in 20 prolonged site visits this year is not too bad (a couple of visits produced double sightings but are just scored once).  And on a couple of visits I've heard one or two fairly subdued kek-kek-kek calls from surrounding woods without seeing the bird during the visit.

But today was very unusual, unique in my experience, limited as that is.  I had been trying to make more observations on a particular local female Honey-buzzard.  She's been showing quite often recently and seems prone to 'butterfly' display and to rushing a kilometre or two across country to confront some errant Honey in a place she seems to think it shouldn't be.

Leaving that aside, mid-morning on July 3rd she appeared over the woods along the top edge of 'white scar' (an old high landslip scar I use as a watchpoint).  I was thrilled at first because she started heading quite low in my direction and I was hoping to record more details of her ventral patterning, but for no reason apparent to me, she abruptly changed direction and flew fast and direct across what I've started calling Gos Valley, just as shorthand in my notebook.  Looking that way, I could make out two distant specks in the sky, one was a pale-bellied Honey-buzzard, and the other looked like it could be a Goshawk.

Four images to show Honey-buzzard/Goshawk encounter. Note left-hand image showing size of Gos, to rear, relative to Honey-buzzard, not far in front. Northern Apennines, 3.vii.2018.

I got the binoculars back on the female Honey and by the time she caught up with the distant birds, the pale-bellied bird had vanished so she swerved at the Goshawk and then pursued it several hundred metres until both were just thin profiles against the wooded skyline hills, and I lost them.

Was that a wise thing to do?  The Gos didn't seem very bothered.  I'm pretty sure the hawk was 'my' adult male (he looks in an identical moult state, with a couple of inner primaries growing back to length, making the wingtip look a bit Sparrowhawk-like; see image at bottom of previous post for comparison with condition on 16 June).  Perhaps a larger female would have been less inclined to let it drop.