Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus 雀鷹
Category I. Scarce passage migrant in autumn, rare in winter and spring. Occurs largely in open-country areas.
IDENTIFICATION
Nov. 2006, Kinni Ho.
28-40 cm. Larger than both Besra and Japanese Sparrowhawk, but smaller than Crested Goshawk, compared to which it has narrower wings and tail. In flight shows relatively short and broad wings with six fingers and a long tail that has a narrow base and sharply-angled corners to the square-ended tip. The longest primaries are p4 and p5, the yellow cere is tinged greenish.
female is larger and longer-winged than male and has slate-grey to silvery upperparts, a moderate to prominent white supercilium (DeCandido et al. 2014), densely grey-brown barred underparts and underwing coverts. Some birds have a hooded appearance that contrasts with the pale unstreaked throat and supercilium.
Mar. 2019, KWOK Tsz Ki.
Juvenile is dark brown above and has a streaked throat (lacking a mesial stripe) and rather coarse and irregular barring on the breast and belly. The obvious supercilium separates this late first-winter bird from Japanese Sparrowhawk. The dark tail bars are narrower than the pale.
Adult males, which appear to be rare here, have bluish-grey upperparts (paler than Besra and Japanese Sparrowhawk), orange-brown cheeks and barred chest to belly and red eyes.
VOCALISATIONS
The primary call is a repeated ‘kyoo-kyoo-kyoo..’, but this is not often heard away from breeding grounds.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
In the lowland wetland and open country areas of the New Territories and Lantau it is both a passage migrant and winter visitor, whereas on Po Toi, where it has been recorded from 24 March to 4 April and from 9 October to 13 November, it is a migrant only. There are relatively few records from closed-canopy woodland or shrubland habitats.
OCCURRENCE
Much less likely to be encountered than Japanese Sparrowhawk or Besra, Eurasian Sparrowhawk is most numerous in autumn, mainly from the second week of October to the third week of November (Figure 1). Numbers are low and gradually decline over the winter period before an apparent influx of migrants occurs from the third week of February and early April, though this may be an artefact of the low number of records at this time. Extreme dates are 27 September 2011 and 25 April 2011.
Though Vaughan and Jones (1913) reported a specimen from HK and regarded it as a common winter visitor, the paucity of other records from the Guangdong coast indicate that it was probably then scarce. La Touche (1892) expressed surprise at not recording any during his stay in eastern Guangdong and the only other known specimens were collected in Hong Kong (Hutson 1931) and on the coast of western Guangdong (Jabouille 1935).
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
A female was seen carrying and feeding on a Common Moorhen, while another bird attempted to predate a Black-capped Kingfisher.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Breeds from Europe east through Russia to the Sea of Okhotsk and south to northern parts of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northeast China; largely resident in Europe, but further east winters south to east Africa, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, northern Indochina and south China (Meyburg et al. 2020). In China a summer visitor to the northwest, northeast and southwest, wintering in the south and east (Liu and Chen 2020).
Polytypic, with birds in HK probably of the taxon A. n. nisosimilis, which breeds from northwest Siberia east to north China and Japan. The nominate form breeds from Europe to southwest Siberia and central Asia, while A. n. melaschistos occurs from east Afghanistan to southwest China. Other subspecies occur in southern Europe and northwest Africa.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Figure 1.
Hutson, H. P. W. (1931). Notes and comments. Ornithology. Hong Kong Naturalist 2: 80-82.
Jabouille, P. (1935). Une collection d’oiseaux du territoire du Kouang-tcheou-wan. Rev. Fr. Ornithol. 5: 34-69.
La Touche, J. D. D. (1892). On Birds collected or observed in the Vicinity of Foochow and Swatow in South-eastern China. Ibis 1892: 400-430, 477-503.
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
Meyburg, B.-U., J. S. Marks, and E. F. J. Garcia (2020). Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.eurspa1.01
Vaughan, R. E. and K. H. Jones (1913). The birds of Hong Kong, Macao and the West River or Si Kiang in South-East China, with special reference to their nidification and seasonal movements. Ibis 1913: 17-76, 163-201, 351-384.
