A new study incorporating traditional Indigenous Australian[1] ecological knowledge describes the largely unknown behavior of so-called ‘Firehawk raptors’ – birds that intentionally spread fire by wielding burning sticks in their talons and beaks.
These flying firestarters are spread across at least three known species – the Black Kite (Milvus migrans), Whistling Kite (Haliastur sphenurus), and Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) – but while their hell-raising may be observed in Indigenous knowledge, that’s not so elsewhere. While news of aerial arsonists fire-bombing the landscape may seem surprising or even shocking, the researchers are eager to emphasize that this destructive phenomenon has actually been witnessed for untold millennia.
Australia is no stranger to fire: The hardy landscape is adapted to blazes, enduring many thanks to humans and lightning. Birds are the third to add to the list. The idea is that these birds of prey use fires to help find food—making easy meals out of insects and other small animals trying to flee the blaze.
In the savanna country of northern Australia, the vegetation is well adapted to the area’s recurrent fires. As flames sweep across the savanna, Black Kites watch for prey like grasshoppers and lizards that flee the fire. But there’s now evidence that Black Kites may actually create fires by carrying burning twigs in their talons and dropping them on a patch of savanna away from the original wildfire. The kites then pick off the escaping prey. Setting a new area ablaze allows that individual kite to feed in a space where there aren’t so many rival predators.
Evidence is sourced from personal testimonies by Australian firefighters and aboriginal people, as well as historical literature, and amounts to 14 firsthand narratives of this specific occurrence. The notion of the birds’ pyromaniac behavior is even present in an aboriginal ceremony where elders dress up as Brown Falcons and Black Kites and move flaming sticks to spread fire in a symbolic, yet sacred, gesture.
My interest was first piqued by a report in a book published in 1964 by an Aboriginal man called Phillip Roberts in the Roper River area in the Northern Territory, that gave an account of a thing that he’d seen in the bush, a bird picking up a stick from a fire front and carrying it and dropping it on to unburnt grass.
Bob Gosford – a lawyer turned ethno-ornithologist (told to ABC)
The concept of fire-foraging birds is well established. Raptors on at least four continents have been observed for decades on the edge of big flames, waiting out scurrying rodents and reptiles or picking through their barbecued remains. What’s new, at least in the academic literature, is the idea that birds might be intentionally spreading fires themselves. If true, the finding suggests that birds, like humans, have learned to use fire as a tool and as a weapon.
“MJ,” a Kimberley, [Western Australia] cattle station caretaker manager … saw kites working together to move a late dry season fire across a river by picking up, transporting, and dropping small, burning sticks in grass, which immediately ignited in several places. The experience resulted in an uncontrollable blaze that destroyed part of the station’s infrastructure.
Marc Bonta, an American academic – co-author with Bob Gosford
Footnotes
- Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in areas within the Australian continent before British colonization. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person’s specific cultural group is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia, and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2021 Australian Census, representing 3.2% of the total population of Australia. Of these Indigenous Australians, 91.4% identified as Aboriginal; 4.2% identified as Torres Strait Islanders; while 4.4% identified with both groups. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag have been the official flags of Australia. [Back]
Further Reading
Sources
PennState Altoona
Science Alert
National Geographic
BirdNote
Audubon
Smithsonian Magazine
National Post
Nine
Mountain Press
