Herons and Buzzards

Well, we’ve had an extraordinary couple of days here. Firstly, yesterday (Thursday 22 January) Mandy was feeding the otters at tea time and saw William, Hilda and their cub (now about 12 weeks old) playing together in a very gentle, caring way. William is such a good dad he even allows the cub to take food from him when Hilda won’t give hers up. As we still don’t have any decent pictures of the cub Mandy went to the barn to get the camera and see if she could capture the moment.

Now, those of you who are familiar with our site will know that we have around 3 herons which, although wild can be seen regularly, usually about tea time when they scavenge the otters left-overs.

When Mandy returned to the pen she saw that Hilda had attacked a heron that had landed nearby and was in the process of killing it.

When otters and herons normally meet there is usually a kind of stand off, they do not attack each other as they have respect for the strength and weaponry of their opponent. After a few minutes one of them will become bored and move off and the other will claim the prize which is food.

For them to fight is a very rare event indeed and we can only think that Hilda saw the heron as a threat to her cub and decided to attack and kill it. The whole thing was over very quickly and the heron was almost certainly doomed from the first seconds of the attack but when William joined in its fate was sealed.

The otters appear to be uninjured even though the heron tried to stab with its beak several times.

Now this is a bit of a gory incident but it is nature in action and possibly uniquely Mandy caught a substantial amount of it on film. We have posted it on Youtube under the title ‘Heron takes on an otter and loses’. It may not be suitable viewing for the faint hearted.

Now on to the next incident; this morning (Friday 23rd January) Denis and I were at work and as I walked by our Bengal Eagle Owls I noticed something odd, it appeared that another bird of prey was in there aviary with them!

I called Denis and together we entered the aviary and saw a juvenile Buzzard had somehow squeezed through the wire mesh, probably to steal a free meal. He found that it’s much easier to get in when no-one is looking than it is to get out when you are being attacked by two Bengal Eagle Owls!

Fortunately none of the birds looked injured and it only took a couple of minutes to get the Bengals into their shed and then catch the terrified Buzzard by gently covering it with my coat. Once caught we took it to a woodland shelter and gave it a quick once over, no injuries but a big dent in his pride was all the experience had cost him, lucky boy. We released him and after a moment or two to gather himself he flew into a tree where he spent 20 minutes preening before disappearing further into the woods. A very lucky Buzzard indeed.

Otters on You tube

We have posted a short film of Biggy, Smalley, Leap and Cinnamon on You tube under the title "Eggstatic otters". It shows them in the first week of January 2009 just messing around really. We hope you like it..

Despite the recent freeze, associated burst pipes etc all the animals are fine. One of our hens shocked us (and maybe Mother Nature) by hatching out six chicks on 4th January; and no this is not a mollycoddled bird, this is an outdoor girl. To date they are all doing fine despite her refusal to accept our offers of heat and extra food.

We have also spotted some unusual movement in one of the wallabys' pouches which indicates that she either has a very bad tum or far more likely, she has a small joey in there.

Hildas' cub continues to do well but is very camera shy. We often see the three of them (William, Hilda and cub) playing together but as soon as I get get my camera out the cub goes in. I will keep trying though, and will post some pictures as soon as I have them.