Enige gegevens over het voedsel van Veluwse en Drentse Haviken Accipiter gentilis in 1955 en 1956

In 2016, an unpublished student report surfaced that described diets of Goshawks in the breeding season for two regions in The Netherlands, i.e. Veluwe and Drenthe. It was based on field studies in 1955 and 1956, performed under the aegis of L. Tinbergen (who himself had published the first paper on Goshawk diets in The Netherlands in 1936). Given the fact that between 1936 (Tinbergen 1936) and 1969 (Opdam et al. 1977) no quantitative information was available on Goshawk food, the data in Jager’s report are an important addition to our knowledge of shifting diets of Goshawks over time. The report is therefore published here verbatim (all quantitative information has been recalculated). Goshawks breeding in the poor coniferous forests of the Veluwe depended to a large extent on racing pigeons (58.4%, together with Jay and Rabbit 77% of the total prey list). In Drenthe, Goshawk diets were more diverse, with racing pigeons amounting to 10.8% of total summer diet.