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Sparrowhawk? (1 Viewer)

D

dewsbirder

Active member
A friend took this photo recently at Lackford Lakes in Suffolk. I can't make it into anything other than a sparrowhawk but the plumage does look very odd. It's a distinctive looking bird. Views welcome.
 

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wow! maybe we have to check the unfortunately unpublished ‘Accipiters of the World’?
never seen anything like this
 
njlarsen said:
Has this guy just visited Australia: https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Brown_Goshawk ?

Niels
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Never seen anything like it. I did a google image search for accipiter and the only thing I found remotely like it was as brown goshawk:eek!:

No sign of jesses in the picture and I have not heard of this being a common falconers bird either but unless it is a totally aberrant sprawk then surely it must have come from a collection somewhere, or as you appear to be suggesting someone has got their photos mixed up!!
 
I will double check with John who took the photo and get confirmation of the date and location. It looks like it was taken in September when I've looked at the properties on the image. I too have googled it and am getting nowhere fast!
 
I believe this is the direct result of a lighting effect to the head, i.e. a low sun shafting an acute angle of lighting to the chest/neck and throwing a corresponding acute angle of shadow across the head.
If you enlarge the head you can see the pale mottled ellipses in the lit part, also showing in the shadowed head.

Cheers
 
KenM said:
I believe this is the direct result of a lighting effect to the head...
Click to expand...

I wondered about that too, but, trying to visualise it in 3-D I couldn't think of any way in a nice blue sky to generate such a dark head with such a neat and clear-cut curved shadow edge around the neck. Perhaps it was about to fly into a telegraph pole just out of shot? The other thing that makes me think it's mostly pigment not shadow is that if you lighten the image, most of it, even the shadowed underwings, can become very pale but the head remains relatively dark. An "aberrant individual" seems a more likely explanation - although that's not actually an explanation (and a cursory trawl through the web hasn't shown any similar Eurasian Sparrowhawks!).
Brian
 
John who took the photos is away at moment but back tomorrow. He thinks he may have a couple of other shots so I'll post what there is when he gets back.
 
Biancone said:
I wondered about that too, but, trying to visualise it in 3-D I couldn't think of any way in a nice blue sky to generate such a dark head with such a neat and clear-cut curved shadow edge around the neck. Perhaps it was about to fly into a telegraph pole just out of shot? The other thing that makes me think it's mostly pigment not shadow is that if you lighten the image, most of it, even the shadowed underwings, can become very pale but the head remains relatively dark. An "aberrant individual" seems a more likely explanation - although that's not actually an explanation (and a cursory trawl through the web hasn't shown any similar Eurasian Sparrowhawks!).
Brian
Click to expand...

Here's a shot I took in Montreal last year.....I wonder if anyone can ID it?

.....and this is relevant to the thread.
 

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KenM said:
Here's a shot I took in Montreal last year.....I wonder if anyone can ID it?

.....and this is relevant to the thread.
Click to expand...

Perhaps a new thread should be started with this Ken, and I can see where you're coming from with this.
However, imo, the dark head this Accipiter shows is more or less obviously not a result of lighting conditions. The eye and bill are fully lit, even with an apparent reflexion on bill/cere. The whole upper side of the head is being lit, and only the very lower part of the throat and "micro-bit" under the eye-brow (right over/in front of the eye) are in shade. Others might disagree.
 
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RafaelMatias said:
Perhaps a new thread should be started with this Ken, and I can see where you're coming from with this.
However, imo, the dark head this Accipiter shows is more or less obviously not a result of lighting conditions. The eye and bill are fully lit, even with an apparent reflexion on bill/cere. The whole upper side of the head is being lit, and only the very lower part of the throat and "micro-bit" under the eye-brow (right over/in front of the eye) are in shade. Others might disagree.
Click to expand...

Agree. For me, the light seems to be coming from mostly in front of and on this side of the hawk. Of the head, only the throat and a very small piece under the eye-brow is in shadow.

Niels
 
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