Aplomado Hunting Strategy

[Venomlust]

This is from a display at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho:



Since it's hard to read:

1) Male aplomado with its perched mate tries to intercept a passing dove.

2) Dove evades male aplomado.

3) Male chases dove until it takes refuge in dead tree.

4) Female aplomado enters tree from below and flushes out the dove.

5) The male, which has been circling, plummets and drives the dove into the grass.

6) The female then dives in for the kill.

7) The female carries the dove to the nest, and plucks feathers before feeding her young.

Pretty cool.

[Shichahn]

I observed this a few times when hacking aplomados for the P-fund. It's hard to know how intentional it is, or if it's really cooperative, when it's a handful of juvenile birds, but the pattern was pretty similar. Larger females tend to be the ones to dive down into cover to chase birds while the males are more aerial and wait on above the females, or at least sit in the top of the bush that the female is trying to flush something out of.

One summer we also had a male from the previous year's release, now an adult, who would hunt small birds and then bring them back to feed the juveniles we were hacking. We were worried he'd try to drive the youngsters off, initially, so it was a real relief to see him taking on a parenting role instead.