Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Japanese lessons

Whilst reviewing photos of the male "Chinese Sparrowhawk" that I saw on Saturday I became a bit less certain about the ID - looking at various on-line resources I realised that there was more overlap in the features of male Chinese and Japanese Sprawks than I had previously appreciated (yes, I need to spend some time next autumn doing some serious sessions on Khao Dinsor to get my skills honed!). One thing that I realised was that when the bird flew I didn't get any white flash of underwing which would probably be apparent on Chinese.

As such I posted the image below on "LBJ lovers Thailand " forum to get second opinions on the ID and almost imediately got confirmation that I was right to question my initial ID, with Ayuwat, Phil and Khemthong all calling it Japanese Sprawk.  Phil stated "Chinese has luminous orange-yellow cere combined with grey orbital ring. Whereas in Japanese both cere and orbital ring are the same dull yellow".

...always learning! 

Japanese Sparrowhawk



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