Greater Racket-tailed Drongo mobbing Changeable Hawk Eagle

Posted by BESG on 11 April 08, Friday
Contributed by KC Tsang

KC Tsang was at Bukit Brown cemetery on the morning of 3rd April 2008 observing swifts and swallows. His mission was to photograph these birds and try develop a field photographic identification guide (see 1, 2 and 3).

While at Bukit Brown, he noticed an approaching raptor. As the bird flew nearer, he recognised it as a Changeable Hawk Eagle (Spizaetus cirrhatus).

His full attention was drawn towards it by the cacophony of loud bird cries. The eagle was being pursued by a pair of Greater Racket-tailed Drongo (Dicrurus paradisus) and all three birds were calling excitedly.

KC managed to capture the magic moment when the eagle was making a powerful downward flap of its huge pair of wings to gain altitude. The lead drongo was way behind and below it, its pair of racket-tails trailing like a pair of black blobs (above).

As the lead drongo approached nearer (above), the eagle suddenly maneuvered around. Instead of being the pursuer, the lead drongo became the pursued. The eagle came very near to the drongo and could very well have grabbed it (below). Maybe it was not hungry then. It merely flew away after scattering the panicking pair of drongos, satisfied with just getting rid of the irritating mobbers.

It should be noted that the Changeable Hawk Eagle is an expert aerial acrobat, capable of zooming up vertically and nose diving, or stooping at lightning speed, even doing a complete looping-the-loop turn in the air.

The Greater Racket-tailed Drongo has a reputation of being aggressive and fearless. It will attack much larger birds, including raptors, especially when they are brooding chicks. These birds have been known to also attack people walking near or below an active nest. Goh Si Guim was once attacked in the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and live to tell his tale.

Drongos also indulge in kleptoparasitism, snatching food from smaller birds as well as mammal species. They have been known to follow groups of foraging babblers. When any of these babblers capture a large prey, the drongo may give an alarm call frightening the foraging individual. When the latter drops the food item, the drongo swoops down and claims it. In this incident of the eagle and the drongos, it was not about kleptoparasitism, as the former was not clutching any prey. Besides, the eagle is a much bigger bird than the drongo.

Related Posts:

Greater Racket-tailed Drongo following woodpeckers Gloria Seow was walking along Rock Path at the Bukit... Greater Racket-tailed Drongo catching praying mantis "Just sharing a picture of a Greater Racket-tailed Drongo... Greater Racket-tailed Drongo eating forest cockroach In late March, Johnny Wee encountered a Greater Racket-tailed... Changeable Hawk Eagle and the long-tailed macaque In August 2006 Johnny Wee was at Venus Drive... Portrait of an eagle: Changeable Hawk Eagle The Changeable Hawk Eagle (Spizaetus cirrhatus) found in this... Changeable Hawk-eagle attacking colugo Colugo or flying lemur (Cynocephalus variegates) is a mammal... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Email Post

Categories: Interspecific, Raptors

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Anti-spam word: (Required)*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.