Bulletin 361 - Uganda #5 - Raptors - part 2

After the week in the Capetown area, the guide Casper Badenhorst, and I flew to Uganda and met a local guide. We started at Entebbe Airport on the southeast corner of Uganda and made a diagonal trip to Murchison Falls NP in the northwest corner. From there, we proceeded south through a chain of nature preserves and parks to the southwest corner at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. We finished along the southern border back to the airport.

Raptors are a popular group of birds to see due to their size and the power they project. Many countries have hawks or eagles or vultures as national birds. In Africa their are an amazing number of raptors to be seen compared to North America. Omitting the falcons, the East Africa Guide Book for Kenya, Uganda Tanzania list 63 species. Sibley has just 24 in North America. In addition, many live in protected parks and they can be approached in a vehicle rather closely for great photos.

Three harrier species were photographed including 2 migrants from Europe. The 18" immature Pallid Harrier (Circus macrourus) is dark brown above and rust below. He also has a white rump like many harriers.

Pallid Harrier - immature

The other migrant was the 18" Montagu's Harrier (Circus pygargus). The male is gray with a black line along the top of the wings.

Montagu's Harrier - male

The 20" African Marsh Harrier (Circus ranivorus) was frequently seen along lake shores. He is a dark brown hawk with a long tail and beige head.

African Marsh Harrier

The 24" Black Kite (Milvus migrans) was often seen flying, but seldom perched. He is actually brown in color and in the morning light had a reddish color in the photo.

Black Kite

The 20" Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) is a nondescript brown hawk.

Common Buzzard

The 24" Augur Buzzard (Buteo augur) comes in a dark morph and a light morph. he has a red tail like our Red-tailed Hawk. Here is an adult dark phase bird. The red in the taill is best seen when the bird is flying.

Augur Buzzard - dark morph

We aslo had a juvenile light morph with a streaked breast.

Augur Buzzard - juvenile light morph

The 14" Lizard Buzzard (Kaupifalco monogrammicus) is a pearly gray hawk with a red bill and red feet.

Lizard Buzzard

The 17" Grasshopper Buzzard (Butastur rufipennis) is a brown hawk with reddish  belly.

Grasshopper Buzzard

The 22" Dark Chanting Goshawk (Melierax metabates) is a dark gray hawk with red beak and legs.

Dark Chanting Goshawk

Accipiters are a group of hawks that hunt birds on the wing. So they have to be very quick to maneuver. Thus they have short wings and long tails. I have on ly seen 2 of the 3 accipiters in North America. But in Uganda I also saw 2 of them. 

The 12" Shikra (Accipiter badius) I had seen in China but did not get a photo. This bird let me walk right up to her. This is a female with the orange eyes. The male has red eyes. The name Shikra is unusual and it comes from Indian - meaning hunter

Shikra - female

The other was the beautiful 22" Black Sparrowhawk (Accipiter melanoleucus). This beautiful bird was in a tree across a field, but he let us walk to within 10 meters from the tree.

Black Sparrowhawk

One thing that has interested me for a long time are national birds. Now that I have done photography on several continents, I decided to look up national or official territorial birds. Some places do not have designated birds, so if they have the bird on their coat-of-arms, I used that bird. Despite the fact I have I have photographed in just a dozen countries, I have photos of the birds of 83 countries or territories. 

I did the same for the USA states and territories as well as the Canadian provinces. You can see them here.

I put the different bird/mammal families in single folders for easy viewing

I have photos of 72 of the 254 species of  hawks, eagles, kites

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald

dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2020 David McDonald

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Bulletin 326 - South Africa #3 - Part 1 - Hawks and Eagles; small mammals

I had an amazing 2 week trip to South Africa and scored almost 280 new species of birds as well as fantastic mammals and a few reptiles. My guide Casper Badenhorst was outstanding. You can see his web site here. He can be contacted through the web site or if you want his email it is info@birdingandwildlifesafaris.com. I recommend him highly as he showed me so many rare birds and animals. I will use him again when I go to Southern Africa.

As usual my birding luck was 100% and we saw almost every thing expected to be found and many that were not expected!

If you like raptors, Africa is an amazing place. We saw eagles almost every day and as many as 4 different species on several days. Of course, there were smaller hawks and kites too. I will start with the smaller ones and work up to the eagles.

We saw the  22" Yellow-billed Kite (Milvus aegyptius) daily. It was the most common raptor. It has a dark brown back, reddish underparts with a yellow bill of course.

Yellow-billed Kite

The 12" Black-winged Kite (Elanus caeruleus) is the same genus and similar to our White-tailed Kite, but the whole wing is black.

Black-winged Kite

We only saw the 15" Lizard Buzzard (Kaupifalco monogrammicus) one time. It is gray with red bill and feet and a black midline stripe on the throat.

Lizard Buzzard

The 16" African Cuckoo-Hawk (Aviceda cuculoides) was another one hit wonder. It is listed as an 'uncommon woodland resident' where it perches quietly.

African Cuckoo-Hawk

There are several harriers, but I photographed only 1 species, the 19" African Marsh Harrier (Circus ranivorus). As usual, I can seldom see these birds perched to photograph as they hunt on the wing, flying over the ground. It is brown with a rufous belly.

African Marsh Harrier

The genus buteo birds are called hawks in the New World like the Red-tailed Hawk. But in the Old World, the buteos are called buzzards and I photographed 3 of them. The 19" Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) is a migrant to  Africa from Europe. We saw several of these birds as they were arriving for the winter.

Common Buzzard

The similar 18" Forest Buzzard (Buteo trizonatus) is an endemic South Africa bird. The difference is the underwing is mostly white in this bird. 

Forest Buzzard

The 23" Jackal Buzzard (Buteo rufofuscus) is more colorful. He is dark backed with a red chest and black belly. It is endemic in South Africa and Namibia.

Jackal Buzzard

 The 24" adult African Harrier Hawk (Polyboroides typus) is a broad-winged gray bird with bare facial skin that my flush red or yellow. He has a wide white band across the black tail. This on flew across the water on our boat trip, and landed in a tree close by. We saw this bird twice more on the trip.

African Harrier Hawk

Here he is perched.

African Harrier Hawk

Continue to part 2