Een bijzonder adoptieverhaal: jonge Haviken krijgen tweede kans

On June 2007, two emaciated Goshawk branchers (male and female) were delivered at a rehabilitation centre and nursed back to full strength. On 15 July both birds were released near the nest of another Goshawk pair, that had fledged a single female. By then, the latter bird was 51 days old, fully capable of flight but still being fed by her parents. The released birds were easily differentiated from the locally fledged female by their overall lighter underparts. Upon release, the male deftly sped away and was not seen anymore despite in-depth observations at the site for another month. The released female at first ran away across the forest floor, but was relocated on 17 July when she approached the nest in full flight. Observations through late August, when the juveniles had become increasingly difficult to approach and were ranging over increasingly wider distances, showed that both juveniles were being fed by the adults, that the fostered female was dominated by the locally fledged female (but not harassed), and that both birds frequently – and often simultaneously – used the nest and favoured trees as plucking and feeding sites.