Grey-faced Buzzard
| Grey-faced buzzard | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Accipitriformes |
| Family: | Accipitridae |
| Genus: | Butastur |
| Species: | B. indicus |
| Binomial name | |
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Butastur indicus (Gmelin, 1788) |
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The grey-faced buzzard (Butastur indicus) is an Asian bird of prey. It is typically between 41 and 46 cm in length, making it a medium-sized raptor. It breeds in East Russia, North China, Korea, and Japan, and winters in South-east Asia.
It is a bird of open land. It eats lizards, small mammals and large insects.
The adult has a grey head, breast and neck, white throat, black moustaches and mesial stripes, brown back and upperwings, and brown bars on white underparts and underwings. The juvenile is brown and mottled above, pale below with brown streaks, and has a broad white supercilium and brown face.
The males and females of the grey faced buzzard are the same in coloration. Adults are red & brown on the upper part of the chest while the chest is brown or dark brown. The chest contains dark down bars across the abdomen. The most infrequent color scheme is the full brown bird's also known as dark morph colored. The medium-sized raptor is typically between 41 and 46 cm long. Wings are pointed and narrow; feathers are thin and look transparent when in flight. the tail is ashy brown with horizontal bars on the tail, the iris is bright yellow. Juveniles are often less reddish, with dark brown bars on the abdomen. Also, the face and eye color is Brown with a buff color.
The majority of the species are found in Japan or more specifically, Satoyama. The area consists of many different environments; woodlands, paddy-fields, streams, and grasslands. In its breeding range, the buzzard is found in coniferous and mixed evergreen forests in mountains, at forest edges, fields, meadows, marshes, and around agricultural lands.
During the breeding season the male buzzards spend up to 90% of their day perched searching for prey. Their hunting perch us usually located around 500 meters away from the nest. They feed on frogs, crustaceans, lizards, insects, small rodents and occasionally other birds. They perch on a tree or a utility pole adjacent to an open habitat, such as rice fields, cropland, and clearings, and swoop down to capture with their feet small animals occurring in Satoyama. They have adopted a search and ambush hunting method to waste less time and energy but still receive enough to survive.
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Wikipedia