Rufous-necked Sparrowhawk - Joshua Vandermeulen
Report

Contributor

Date

Location

Foli--Standardwing lek side-track
Maluku Utara, Maluku, Indonesia
Media from this location Illustrated Checklist
Map
Map Coordinates: 1.2619681, 128.1826401
Age
Not specified
Sex
Not specified

Observation details

We found this roosting raptor pre-dawn and despite my best efforts, it would not wake up or show us its head. At first I thought that this was a Barking Owl. However, some things don’t line up including the thinness of the toes with the middle toe extending past the others (Barking Owl has thicker toes of roughly the same length), the rufous tones on the back, and the length of the wings in proportion to the tail. I am fairly sure that it is an Accipiter. The only question: which one? The closest that I can come up with is an immature Rufous-necked Sparrowhawk due to the pattern of the streaking down the front, the tail pattern and the overall size (it was a relatively small raptor). All of the other Accipiters on Halmahera have barring as well as streaking down the front and/or are larger. Unfortunately, there aren't many photos of immature Rufous-necked Sparrowhawk to compare to. I welcome suggestions/corrections!

Technical information

Model
NIKON D7500
ISO
1000
Focal length
300 mm
Flash
Flash fired, return detected
f-stop
f/4.0
Shutter speed
1/160 sec
Dimensions
1346 pixels x 1500 pixels
Original file size
1.31 MB