Poowong North, Schmidts Rd: Very hilly farming land with very good native tree and understory plantings along watercourses and other non productive land. Many old tall trees with hollows. Native shrubs around the houses provide good year-round flowers for honeyeaters. Large fenced dams good for water birds. This bird hunts the nearby dairy for pigeons and sparrows, quite approachable. There is a nest site that it defends but actual breeding not seen by me.
In my experience Goshawks do not like being looked at, whereas Sparrowhawks couldn’t care less. Given the length of the middle toe and its behaviour - perhaps the latter? Of course size is an unknown factor here
Seemed to have the bulkiness that the brown has, its a big bird and as I said it is quite used to people as it hunts the dairy area during milking and washup. The photos were taken quite near the suspected nest and it was abusing me a lot, thats how I found it, otherwise it sits quietly in the heavy foliage. If the toes are the diagnostic feature I will check my archive for pics that show these better. Thanks for the feedback.
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