The joint working group of the Hungarian Ornithological and Conservation Association (MME) and the nature conservation watch service of the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate found a strange nest in the Dévány landscape in May: in addition to three bald eagle chicks, a healthy buzzard chick was also raised.
According to the association's announcement, the buzzards' branch could certainly have been taken into their nest by the bald eagles as prey.
however, since it remained unharmed and once in the nest, like the young eagles, it asked the eagle parents for food, so they continued to feed it along with their own three young ones.
During the inspection in June, the buzzard nestling was already flying around the nest, apparently healthy, while the three eagle nestlings, as is typical for the species, only left the nest in July.
They indicated that the case of baby buzzards raised by eagles is very rare worldwide, but not without precedent. In Hungary, according to the records of the MME
during the inspection of more than ten thousand eagle nests in the past thirty years, live buzzard nestlings have been observed only six times in the nests of bald eagles, five more such cases have become known in connection with golden eagles.
They wrote that the buzzard is the most common bird of prey in Europe, it is also widespread in Hungary, and can be found in varying numbers in almost all habitats. Approximately 1 percent of the prey animals identified at buzzard nests are buzzards, mostly chicks taken from nests, so it is a relatively common case that buzzard chicks end up in an eagle's nest.
The chances of survival of such chicks are extremely small, as they must survive the predation and transport to the nest without serious injury.
In addition, the parent birds must be disturbed by something so that they cannot start feeding immediately, and the nestlings must also accept the newcomer. If all this happens, it may happen that the buzzard chicks, which are similar to the eagle chicks but smaller, will instinctively start feeding them, and the eagle parents will raise and protect them in the nest together with their own chicks.
The bald eagle is a globally endangered bird species, two-thirds of the European Union population nests in Hungary. Domestic nests have been regularly inspected every year by MME and national park specialists since the 1970s.
MTI
Featured image: Bald eagle chicks at 5 weeks (Photo: Márton Horváth)
