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Raptor for ID - Moldova Republic (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Cristian Mihai
- Start date
Lappkrabben
Well-known member
It's a goshawk IMO.
chris butterworth
aka The Person Named Above
I'd go with Goshawk, a well. The trailing edge to the wing is distinctly "S" shaped ( more than in Nthn Sparrowhawk ) and, if the tail was closed, the outer feathers look shorter, giving it rounded corners.
Chris
Chris
Cristian Mihai
Cristian Mihai
Thank you everybody. Goshawk was my first idea too, but I wasn't sure...
lou salomon
the birdonist
to me it looks like a sparrowhawk. but i admit that from this poor pic i could be wrong. square tail corners and not so broad 'thighs' led me to this id.
That was my first thought, too (the same goes for the bird in post #4).
rockfowl
Mark Andrews
Me too, and very 'pinched' at the tail base
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StuartReeves
Local rarity
I also think Sparrowhawk for both birds.
Your bird does look exceptionally much like Sparrowhawk. The hand is almost equally broad as the arm, whereas on a Goshawk the hand is clearly narrower than the arm, creating an almost oval wing shape. Here are some randomly selected pictures of flying Goshawks:
http://www.commanster.eu/commanster/Vertebrates/Birds/SpBirds/Accipiter.gentilis.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/image/105343550
http://www.pbase.com/image/93076271
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yeliseev/109396987/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsmzth/1862848833/
http://www.lintukuva.fi/lajikuvat/kuvahtml/9accgen114.html
Here's a Sparrowhawk:
http://www.thamesvalleybirds.co.uk/...723-sparrow-hawk-accipiter-nisus-dsc_0063.jpg
You have to agree that the shape of your bird looks much more like the Sparrowhawk linked above (in terms of wing shape and bulk of the body) than any of the Goshawks (whichever species it really is).
Lappkrabben
Well-known member
I agree on sparrowhawk. No doubt i was wrong in my initial thoughts on goshawk. Just a short first look gave me (small) male goshawk.
But as said by others it's a sparrow.
Not the first time i'm wrong and for sure not the last
But as said by others it's a sparrow.
Not the first time i'm wrong and for sure not the last
nickderry
C'est pas ma faute, je suis anglais.
First bird is a sparrowhawk, Firetail's photo IMO is a goshawk - it has the same wing proportions as CAU's first link, a pronounced secondary bulge and is seemingly a chunky bird. Plus, as he says, it was the same size as Long-legged Buzzard, which a sparrowhawk clearly isn't.
Jane Turner
Well-known member
The first bird is as typical a Sparrowhawk as you could hope to see. The second bird looks a little more promising, though if there was in life no direct comparison to judge size, I'd be leaning rather heavily towards a big bulky female Sparrowhawk too.
The thing I mean regarding the wing proportions is the width of the hand compared with the width of the arm. To illustrate this, I measured distance across the broadest part of the arm and the distance between the tip of P10 (or actually a point just short of the tip, see attached picture) and the tip of P4, and calculated the ratio. The ratio for the bird in post #4 was about 1.30 for one wing and 1.29 for the other. The corresponding ratio varied between 1.43 and 1.66 for the six Goshawks linked in my previous post (the mean value was 1.49), and between 1.25 and 1.46 for these six Sparrowhawks (the mean value was 1.35):
http://www.thamesvalleybirds.co.uk/...723-sparrow-hawk-accipiter-nisus-dsc_0063.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/image/38796278
http://www.pbase.com/johanops/image/110978451
http://www.pbase.com/image/83349986
http://www.pbase.com/image/22320193
http://www.pbase.com/oedegaard/image/49797177
The images were selected based on the criterion that the leading edge of the wing should be pretty straight and that the photographic angle should be good enough. The ratio for the bird in post #1 was 1.40 for one wing and 1.43 for the other.
I admit that such measuring of distances from photographs is not especially good practice as it's prone to a lot of different errors starting from photographic angles and the postures of wings, but it does illustrate my point about the hand looking broad on the bird in post #4 (indeed the proportions are clearly different than on any of the six Goshawks used for comparison). If the bird was as big as a Long-legged Buzzard it must have been a large female Goshawk, but the proportions of the wings look odd to me.
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