Hawk Buzzard
| Hawk Buzzard | ||||||||||||
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Hawk Buzzard ( Buteo buteo vulpinus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Buteo buteo vulpinus | ||||||||||||
| ( Gloger , 1833) |
The Hawk Buzzard ( Buteo buteo vulpinus ) is a medium-sized bird of prey from the hawk family .
features
The hawk buzzard has the typical buzzard shape with broad, fingered wings , a relatively long tail and a compact body. The beak is relatively small, the tarsus and muzzle are featherless. The body length of the Hawk Buzzard is 40–48 centimeters, the wingspan is 1.05–1.25 meters. This makes it somewhat smaller than the nominate form of the common buzzard .
The hawk buzzard is very similar to both the nominate form of the common buzzard and the eagle buzzard . There are four different color morphs : a dark, a red-brown, a fox-red and a gray morph. Birds of the dark morph are black-brown on the body, as well as on the upper and lower wing coverts, the wing feathers are very light, and the dark rear edge of the wing is also very noticeable. The hand wings are very light to white. The tail is light with a broad dark end band. The distinction from the eagle buzzard in the dark morph is only possible on the basis of structural features. The wings of the Hawk Buzzard are much shorter than those of the Eagle Buzzard. The red-brown morph resembles a common buzzard of the nominate form, but the light chest band is missing, the hand wings are light and the end band of the tail is only weakly pronounced. Hawk buzzards of the fox-red morph are very red overall, the end band of the tail is also relatively weak and the dark rear edge of the wing is very pronounced. The fox red morph is the only one with a light chest band. The gray morph is similar to the red-brown, except that all warm brown colors are replaced by gray.
The most striking structural feature of the Hawk Buzzard are the rather short and narrow wings (but with wide arm wings) and the tail which is quite long compared to the common buzzard.
voice
The voice of the hawk buzzard corresponds to the nominate form of the common buzzard. He very often utters a plaintive whistle that falls slightly towards the end, which is usually described as "piiäääh" .
distribution
The hawk buzzard breeds in northeastern Europe and western Asia, where it replaces the nominate form of the common buzzard. He is a distinct long-distance migrant who moves in large troops across the Bosporus and Palestine to Southeast Africa .
Lifestyle and diet
The hawk buzzard is a steppe raptor that mainly lives in open landscapes. Like all buzzards, it is diurnal and hunts from a circling search flight or from a raised seat .
The hawk buzzard's diet consists mainly of small rodents , the main diet is mice, rats and voles. In addition, large insects, worms, reptiles and occasionally small birds or nestlings are also captured.
Systematics
The so-called "buteo-vulpinus complex" comprises numerous subspecies of the polymorphic species of the common buzzard ( Buteo buteo ), which have long been problematic for taxonomy . The closely related and (to some subspecies ) very similar eagle buzzard ( Buteo rufinus ) and mountain buzzard ( Buteo oreophilus ) can also be connected here. Within the vast area of this swarm of species , from Japan to South Africa, a different number of species and subspecies was distinguished. In a current revision of the complex using molecular and morphological features, the authors come to the following conclusions:
- Based on the mitochondrial DNA , the forms cannot be differentiated from one another. This was true even of the most variable sequence, a non-coding pseudogene . Many forms, including vulpinus , even had the same allele monomorphically .
- Most species and subspecies are morphologically differentiable, even if the characteristics are e.g. T. show broad overlap. However, the species or subspecies with neighboring (or sympatric ) areas were always sufficiently differentiated from one another. This also applies to Buteo buteo buteo and Buteo buteo vulpinus in Eastern Europe. The characteristics were e.g. T. morphometry , such as open or wooded preference with features of life habitats , migratory or non-migratory bird , preferred prey species, correlated, which in some cases convergent makes training likely.
From this, the authors conclude that there is a complex of forms that has only recently been split up, probably after the Ice Age, the individual lines of which are not reproductively completely isolated from one another and which is still influenced by the distribution of the genetic markers ( alleles ) of the initial population. The reticulate evolution can not be perfectly reproduced with the cladistic methods . They propose to see Buteo buteo as a collective species in which all the forms mentioned (either as small species or as subspecies) should be classified. According to the investigation, the status of a subspecies can thus be retained.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Lars Svensson, Peter J. Grant, Killian Mullarney: The new cosmos bird guide. All kinds of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Franckh-Kosmos Verlag, 2nd edition, 2011. ISBN 978-3-440-12384-3 , pp. 106-108.
- ↑ L. Kruckenhauser, E. Haring, W. Pinsker, MJ Riesing, H. Winkler, M. Wink, A. Gamauf: Genetic vs. morphological differentiation of Old World buzzards (genus Buteo, Accipitridae). In: Zoologica Scripta , Volume 33, 2004, pp. 197-211. doi : 10.1111 / j.0300-3256.2004.00147.x .
swell
- Rob Hume: The European bird world . Dorling Kindersley, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8310-1731-7 .