The eagles Parham photographed no doubt brought the Red-tail to their nest intending not to raise it, but to feed it to their own nestling. However, when it was deposited into the aerie, the hungry and disoriented fledgling immediately began begging for food alongside the eaglets. The confused parent eagles mistook the hawk as one of their own and began treating it in kind. Though surprising, such behavior can occur when the wrong species ends up in a nest. That’s because most adult birds cannot recognize their own chicks from others—a vulnerability that brood parasites exploit by laying eggs in other species’ nests.
Very interesting, but a sad ending!
I couldn’t decide if the ending that happened was any better than the one that was originally intended by the eagles. The world is a harsh place.
As a tangentially related fact, I learned opossums have more babies than the mother can possibly feed, so many babies are doomed from the second they are born. Seems a cruel design quirk…
Oh man thats nothing.
Pigs are born with extra tusk-like teeth used to kill eachother while fighting over a tit.
Ranchers have to separate the sow and piglets before cutting them, as the sow can become dangerous if the piglets act threatened.
I swear, the most toughest, macho human you could find wouldn’t be able to make it through a day in the life of most baby animals! 😅
I couldn’t find any more info on this beyond the original article.
If you do search for the photographer, Parham Pourahmad, he seems to have been winning many awards and accolades, so you may want to look at his other pics if you like this.
As to why the eagles eventually turned on the hawk, I couldn’t find anything conclusive, but I found a before and after set of stories about another incident in California last year, and an older one in British Columbia that had a better ending, so by looking at a success and a failure, we can deduce a few things.
The eagles grow a bit slower than hawks, but we don’t know from the story how big these eagles were compared to the hawk. The eagles are larger and more aggressive, and the hawk may have gotten injured, either through competition for food or fighting with the adoptive siblings. Also, if food being delivered to the nest was limited to begin with, the eagles may have outcompeted the hawk for what was available. Once injured or at the beginning stages of starvation/dehydration, it only gets more and more difficult to get food from the eaglets. Reading the behavior descriptions in the success article, it seems a very strong personality would be required to survive even in a fairly “safe” eagle’s nest.
The articles have some great pics and info, so give them a look!
That’s a great photo!
I agree! I come across a lot of raptor stories I can’t use on !superbowl@lemmy.world since raptor care all falls under the same umbrella, and this one was too good to not share.
“I know I just put some food in here… Now I can’t find it amongst all the babies!”
Lol eenie meenie money mo…
I wonder why they stopped feeding the hawk?
And yet they didn’t attack it, kick it out, etc. They just basically ignored it do death. It’s like they just chose not to acknowledge the whole thing.
It had to grow awfully big before they figured it out too, they should have just stuck it out at that point.
Yes, that’s my wonder. There must have been some reason.
I posted a new comment with 3 article links (with some neat pics!) with some info that may fill us in on what could have happened based on other similar cases. You may want to give those a read.
I put it up in a new comment so others have a good chance to see it too, so I’m replying here so you get a notification.
That’s awesome. Napoleon complex in birds. I noted the author encouraged us not to anthropomorphize the birds, and yet interspecies compassion has been documented, even predator to prey. Birds are incredibly intelligent, and no doubt, instinct probably did play a large role; and also acknowledge that a great part of intellectual development also includes emotional intelligence. Our current generations may not know. If our species lasts long enough, future generations may.
Thanks for specifically letting me know. I appreciate it very much.
Bird have been around much longer than we have, 150,000,000 vs >200,000, so they have had time to learn and work through more than we could ever dream. We would barely recognize life 100-200 years ago, and who can say we’re we’ll be in another few hundred. We could be nurturing foster babies from other worlds and learning who knows what from them! 😁
You are one of my frequent commenters, so I need to foster that as well!
I enjoy thoughtful posts. You make them. Thank you.
