Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis 蒼鷹
Category I. Accidental. Ex-captive birds also occur.
IDENTIFICATION
Jan. 2022, Kinni Ho. Juvenile.
50-65 cm. Large and heavy-bodied accipiter, some birds larger than Large-billed Crow. Juvenile has brown upperparts with pale fringes to feathers and prominent supercilium from just in front of eye.
Jan. 2022, Kinni Ho. Juvenile.
In flight shows deep chest, relatively broad wings, bulging secondaries, round-tipped tail and more protruding head than Eurasian Sparrowhawk.
On juvenile the chest, flanks and axillaries have bold, dark brown streaks, fairly pale underwing coverts and well-marked barring on underwings.
Adult is grey-brown to bluish-grey above with dark crown and cheeks and striking pale supercilium, finely barred underparts and yellow eyes. Female larger than male and generally browner above and less neatly barred below.
VOCALISATIONS
A downslurred whistle and a repeated ‘kee-kee-kee-kee…’
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Has occurred in lowland wetlands, which is not unusual for records of this species outside the breeding season.
OCCURRENCE
There are two records of birds considered to be of natural origin:
2011: an adult male at Mai Po on 11 December (Chan 2013).
2018: one at Pui O, Lantau on 1 January.
In addition, there are several records of birds considered not of natural occurrence due to urban location, plumage condition or the presence of markers indicating previous captivity.
BEHAVIOUR, DIET & FORAGING
No observations.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Breeds across the Holarctic from Alaska east to northeast Siberia, as far south as northern Mexico, extreme northwest Africa, and the Himalayas. Some birds winter in southern part of range, including South Korea, the coastal provinces of south China, north Vietnam and north Thailand (Squires et al. 2020). However, Northern Goshawk appears to be rare in south China, with only two specimen records from Guangdong: an adult collected in the hills west of Shantou in January in the late 1880s (La Touche 1892) (year of collection erroneously given as 1899 in La Touche 1925-34) and one obtained at Gaoyao (near Dinghu Shan) dated 21 December 1959 in the collection of the South China Institute of Endangered Animals, Guangzhou. It is, however, an occasional or uncommon migrant and winter visitor in Taiwan (Ding et al. 2020).
Due to the weak differentiation between subspecies and the fact this species is a rare visitor to HK, the taxon recorded is uncertain. Four subspecies breed in Asia: A. g. buteoides in north Eurasia, A. g. albidus in northeast Siberia, A. g. schvedowi from northeast Asia to central China and A. g. fujiyamae in Japan. Cheng (1987) attributes south China records to schvedowi. Six other subspecies are also recognised, three in Europe and three in North America.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Chan, P. K. W. (2013). Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis at Mai Po Nature Reserve. The first Hong Kong record. Hong Kong Bird Report 2011: 198-201.
Cheng, T. H. (1987). A Synopsis of the Avifauna of China. Science Press, Beijing.
Ding, T. S., C. S. Juan, R. S. Lin, Y. J. Tsai, J. L. Wu, J. Wu and Y. H. Yang (2020). The 2020 CWBF Checklist of the Birds of Taiwan. Bird Record Committee, Chinese Wild Bird Federation, Taipei. Downloaded at: https://www.bird.org.tw/report/2020/english
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.
La Touche, J. D. D. (1925-34). Handbook of the birds of Eastern China Vol. 1-2. Taylor and Francis, London.
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.
Squires, J. R., R. T. Reynolds, J. Orta, and J. S. Marks (2020). Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.norgos.01.
