• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Saker falcon? Marettimo, Sicily (2 Viewers)

Kinthissa

Well-known member
may i consult you again on this bird previously posted on 23rd September (pic 5) http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=351006

Lou identified it as Eleonora's falcon. Tom confirmed it as a 2nd cy dark morph, but added : > the head is still juvenile and bleached, in fact everything is wrong compared to normal adult plumage

i could not make sense of the F. eleonorae id. the bird i saw was about buzzard size, of ample proportions.

a friend suggested Saker, and kindly enhanced the photo for me. the feet look blue, and there seems to be more barring in the primaries, with the secondaries greyer and plainer. could it possibly have been an immature Saker falcon, Falco cherrug?

they are rarely seen here, but their presence in southern Italy is known, either in passage or overwintering.
 

Attachments

  • 17i23Falco.jpg
    17i23Falco.jpg
    773.8 KB · Views: 201
Hmmm, quite a nice enhancement seeing much more details, still not straightforward but especially the tail feathers with white points rather than full barring is better for Saker, although it would be a very dark individual (but this may again be artefact with coverts looking darker than they are, maybe just underexposed), colours of feet are difficult but do not look yellow as in second cal. year Eleonora and nice bold streaking on body also does not look perfect for dark Eleonora's. Buzzard size obviously isn't a description of Eleonora's but perfect for Saker but size is so easy to overestimate.
Finally this picture looks better for Saker, other opinions most welcome (having myself not much field experience with Saker)
 
Have no experience of Saker but the image does - to me - convey the impression of a large Falco rather than a smaller species such as Eleonora's, FWIW.

RB
 
I have some experience of Sakers in captivity and it certainly looks like one... and there are many captive hybrids which look the same.. Sakers were regularly lost by poor falconers not allowing for their urge to migrate during the migration season...
 
Falcon id

Hi all,
fraught with difficulty trying to judge raptor size from photos.

A good way of identifying Saker is that possibly due to their alignment, the tail-barring mostly coagulates as round spots as in photo #1. This evolves into a relatively simple plain-tailed adult with a few spots down the plain central pair, when viewed from above. Immature Lanner and Gyr rarely if ever show this effect although having heavily barred tails.
 
I have seen juvenile Sakers as heavily streaked as this in Hungary. Looks good to me. Nothing too abnormal in my opinion about the degree of breast streaking. Dark primary tips look good as does general profile of bird on jizz etc. But can't see any moutachial stripe tho I am not entirely sure head is turned towards us. You would expect to see that on such a dark and heavily streaked bird whereas it can be inconspicouous on paler adults.
Really can't see what else it can be though?
 
Last edited:
All this is very exciting. Thank you, Tom, for re-examining this bird, and my thanks to everyone for your helpful comments.
 
Last edited:
I've a lot more experience with Eleonora's than Saker and I wouldn't call this an Eleonora's either.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 7 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top