Well, it’s really not a dogfight, but a desperate aerial battle between predator and prey. We encountered the “hobby” (a falcon) earlier, and learned that it can capture swifts, dragonflies, and even bats on the wings. This video, highlighted in a comment by reader mesonparticle, was so cool that I decided to put it above the fold. It looks for all the world like a WWI dogfight, except the aerodynamic maneuvers are far more intricate. The YouTube notes say this:
This is the pursuit of a Common Swift (Apus apus) by the male of a nesting pair of falcons known as a Hobbies (Falco subbuteo). The pursuit lasted over three minutes, with the Swift managing to avoid all attempts at capture, until finally distracted by the arrival of the female Hobby. Within seconds of the male Hobby making the catch, the female claims the prize and returns to her chicks.
Bird Watching, where the video was posted, adds this:
This wonderful amateur footage show two Hobbies chasing a Swift. The Hobbies bank and stoop, accelerating into G-force turns, the wingbeats deep and elastic, the tail ruddering. Repeatedly, they swing under and up at the Swifts, attacking from beneath so that their target is silhouetted against the sky.
Watch the whole thing, as halfway through the video slows to half speed and other parts highlight the similarity between the morphology of two species of birds. Dramas like this are played out millions of times per day, but we rarely know about them.
Two of my favourite birds! A fantastic sequence. The speed and agility of predator and prey obviously tested the camera operator to the limits whilst trying to keep track of them!
Hili is probably watching, indecisive over which side to root for.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Hobbies are amazing! Think about how birds’ brains need to work to navigate in three dimensions like that!
I often see “prey” species “chasing” “predator” species, I wonder if they’re chasing them away from a nest or if it’s just safer to be behind the predator.
Very few of us get to see/record these kinds of events which are much more frequent than we can appreciate–your million times a day is spot on. I appreciated seeing this at normal speed and then slowed down. The profiles of the two species are simply marvelous. How alike they are. What a hunting technique. And then all the subtle feather movements. I also couldn’t help but think throughout of the energetics involved in chasing and being chased. What condition these birds must be in. Once in a while I almost expected one of the birds, perhaps both, to simply drop from the sky…exhausted. Thanks.
As a pilot, I feel so inadequate.
As a large brained mammal, I feel inadequate.
Hunting SWIFTS seems like a difficult way to make a living. Perhaps this is why hobbies are not very common.
Stunning footage of two of my favourite bird species.
One thing to bear in mind, both species migrate, and this must put a very different evolutionary pressure on their design.
We can’t be seeing the same swift in this brilliant footage. The hobby would have been hunting a loose group of swifts, and they must have been different individuals in each sequence. Each swift in turn would have made a pretty quick exit after this experience – until the last one.