"Setting up a base in the tallest tree, usually around a creek somewhere, the red goshawk will hunt beneath the canopy chasing down speed demons such as the rainbow lorikeet and plucking them out of the air. The soft thrum of their deep, powerful, metre-wide wings can be heard from the ground as they accelerate, before they silently swoop and bank like some feathered fighter jet."
"It was still frequently seen in northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland up to the 2000s but after that, the records completely disappear. It has fallen off the map. Despite the bird being first described in 1801, they were never a common sight and, until recently, relatively little was known about the habits of Australia's rarest bird of prey. Most birdwatchers have never seen one."
"Dr Richard Seaton, the director of terrestrial birds at BirdLife Australia, spent months looking for them in south-east Queensland in 2013 revisiting places where they had been recorded only 15 years earlier. I couldn't find them anywhere. So we started a recovery team, he says. At the time, we didn't know their home range or what habitats they needed or really what they were doing or where they were going."
The red goshawk is an endemic Australian raptor that hunts beneath forest canopies, pursuing fast birds like rainbow lorikeets and capturing them in flight. The species has disappeared from much of eastern Australia, with records common until the 2000s and then vanishing, indicating local extinctions. Historical records show the species ranged as far south as Sydney, but sightings have always been rare. Recent targeted searches found few or no birds, prompting the formation of a recovery team. Key unknowns include current population size, home range, habitat needs and movement patterns, which are crucial for effective conservation planning.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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