Rare birds show off their plumage and hunting skills at Delta Park

It is a great time for birdwatching at Delta Park.

A juvenile Ayres’s hawk eagle has been hunting in the park in recent weeks, swooping down to catch pigeons, and causing a ruckus among the hadedas and other birds in sight. Then the famous spotted eagle owls are at a critical point in the months before mating season: The bereaved mother and chick recently having watched the rest of the family die or disappear, and now are starting to form a bond with a new, young male.

So explained Geoff Lockwood, resident manager at the Delta Environmental Centre. “The new male owl is less than a year old and there are no records of one so young managing to mate and provide for a female and her chicks, but I think that is what he might have to do. “The female has given birth every year for a while now so I think it will be in her nature to try mate and lay eggs again this year. The new male is not even a year old and he will have to hunt for the whole family when she nests. Time will tell if he is up to it.”

Lockwood explained that the young Ayres’s hawk eagle is the first of its kind spotted in the area in memory. This despite two recent fires that ravaged the park and its Florence Bloom Bird Sanctuary in the last year, which destroyed much of the wildlife habitat.

“Birds have also seemed restless for the season to end,” Lockwood added. “Some, like the barn swallows have started flying in groups, doing practice runs ahead of their migration.”