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 )