Teesmouth Bird Club

It's been around for several days but I've dipped every time I tried for it. Today it gave very good views.

As it hunted over a grassy field it kept picking up balls of grass every few seconds and then watching them as it let them fall.

I'd hazard a guess that it might have been watching for mice/voles falling from the grassy bundles?

amazing photos ian .I wonder if the balls of straw are harvest mice nests,

Excellent shots Ian.

Fantastic photos Ian....was the bird in the field beff fore the Huntsman buildings as you approach the A19???. As Gary Cummings and myself saw a raptor which had Harrier characteristics on the way back from Rowlands Gill at aroond 3.45pm.

Quote from: martyb on March 10, 2012, 10:31:36 PM
Fantastic photos Ian....was the bird in the field beff fore the Huntsman buildings as you approach the A19???. As Gary Cummings and myself saw a raptor which had Harrier characteristics on the way back from Rowlands Gill at aroond 3.45pm.

Yes, that sounds like the area it was in. A few people have mentioned one being around over the last week. I think it's pot luck exactly where it turns up to hunt. I've tried five or six times previously but not seen it until today. I only stopped today as a friend mentioned they'd seen it there earlier.

Showed again today in the same spot at almost exactly the same time as yesterday though didn't come as close today.

What a fascinating sequence of behaviour, picking up the mammal nest (at that size the nest will be of field vole rather than harvest mouse, though is probably still a new 1km record for field vole depending on where exactly it was on Wynyard)

I've never heard of this behaviour before (although of course it might be well known to birders).  It would be interesting to know whether it did this regularly, ie made the association between the nest and the mammal or whether it has just gone for the vole as it ran in to the nest and got vole and nest together.

Ian, would you mind if we used one of the photos in the mammal group newsletter?

Cheers
Ian

Sorry, I didn't read you post thoroughly.  It obviously had made the connection between nest and vole.

Ian

Quote from: Ian Bond on March 13, 2012, 12:14:31 PM
What a fascinating sequence of behaviour, picking up the mammal nest (at that size the nest will be of field vole rather than harvest mouse, though is probably still a new 1km record for field vole depending on where exactly it was on Wynyard)

I've never heard of this behaviour before (although of course it might be well known to birders).  It would be interesting to know whether it did this regularly, ie made the association between the nest and the mammal or whether it has just gone for the vole as it ran in to the nest and got vole and nest together.

Ian, would you mind if we used one of the photos in the mammal group newsletter?

Cheers
Ian

It certainly looked to be a pattern of behaviour as it did this several times. The photos above actually show three different balls of grass though I observed it picking up 5 or six before it caught something and flew away. Others had observed it doing the same thing an couple of hours earlier in the day.

The grid ref for where it was photographed is NZ432270 though it hunts over quite a large area north, east and west of here.

Feel free to use the photos.

Seen only briefly late afternoon.

Ian,
     This interesting behaviour of snatching voles nests speculatively from the ground as a novel way of hunting, may not have been recorded before, let alone photographed.
Have you thought of writing a brief note, plus photographs, to " British Birds" describing these observations?
Alistair McLee

Shall do Alistair.

I've posted a thread about the behaviour on Bird Forum in the Bird Behaviour forum - http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=2390018#post2390018

Hopefully someone may know something about this behaviour.

As response to the Bird Forum thread quotes similar behaviour noted -

Quote
Eugene S. Rolfe (1897) noted the following interesting attempt to secure a meal: "Many times I have watched the Marsh Hawk sailing low and keenly scanning the ground on the open prairie, and suddenly pouncing down and quickly ascending again with an empty mouse nest in its talons, and one one occasion I followed behind for fully 2 miles and in that distance it picked up and dropped seven of these empty nests. On examination they proved to be simply wads of fine dried grasses, and it was easy to see that if these had all chanced to be occupied by families of young mice, the foray of that particular Hawk would have been most fruitful in the destruction of these small pests."

This sounds remarkably similar to what I saw.

It appeared this afternoon at 3.40pm. Thanks to Peter on the 'mound' I saw it as I was just packing up to leave when he shouted. Just as he joined me it came a little closer but not by much. I stayed another half hour and it remained in view most of that time, though didn't come close to the road.

All heavy crops taken with a Canon 7D + Canon 400mm lens + Canon 2x teleconverter.