Ayres' hawk-eagle
| Ayres' hawk-eagle | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Accipitriformes |
| Family: | Accipitridae |
| Genus: | Hieraaetus |
| Species: | H. ayresii |
| Binomial name | |
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Hieraaetus ayresii Gurney, 1862 |
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| Ayres's hawk-eagle Range | |
| Synonyms | |
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Aquila ayresii (Gurney 1862) |
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Aquila ayresii (Gurney 1862)
Ayres's hawk-eagle (Hieraaetus ayresii), also referred to as Ayres' eagle, is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. It is native to African woodlands. Its name honors South African ornithologist Thomas Ayres.
The adult male has blackish upperparts which are mottled with white, and usually has a white forehead and supercilium. The upper-wing coverts are similar. The tail is ashy grey with a broad black tip and three to four narrower dark bars. Primary feathers and secondary feathers are black. The underparts are white, with heavy dark brown spots and blotches on the breast and belly, becoming sparser on thighs and vent. The legs are pure white. The under-wing coverts are brown marked with white, the under side of flight feathers is dark and heavily barred lacking any noticeable grey patch. The eyes are yellow to orange, the cere and feet yellow, the bill is bluish horn coloured becoming paler towards the base, with a black tip. The males are smaller than the females which are also darker and usually more densely spotted on the underparts, and have s smaller amount of white on the forehead and supercilium. There are two phases, the normal as described above and a melanistic phase, which is mostly black with white markings.
Ayres's hawk-eagle has a patchy sub-Saharan distribution ranging from Sierra Leone east to Somalia, and south to northern Namibia and northeast South Africa.
In the rainy season moves out of denser and taller deciduous woodlands of central Africa into more open tree savanna further south, and probably into coastal East Africa; as the rains cause the leaves to emerge turning woodland into forest and tree savanna into woodland. It may then enter towns in South Africa to prey mainly on doves and feral pigeons. A similar north to south movement is expected in west Africa, where species has been recorded as a vagrant west to Senegal and Gambia, albeit unconfirmed.
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Wikipedia