Simon Thomsett takes us on a journey to meet some of Africa's magnificent haws. He is one of our speakers on our Birds of Prey Series where he will be sharing even more fascinating lessons!
Low-down, I was stuck in a Nairobi traffic jam. High-up I could see a magnificent hunt about to play out. Street-hawkers followed my gaze as a black-sparrowhawk corkscrewed after a diving pigeon, snatched it mid-air and was pursued across the city-scape by crows. Angry drivers honked their horns, but I was entranced for I had just seen something as wild and enthralling as a cheetah hunt on the plains.
The black sparrowhawk, graceful and thin and with a long middle toe (this proves it to be a bird specialist), comes in as Africa’s largest hawk, an ultimate dove or pigeon hunter that can and will occasionally take young chickens. It is their chicken-hunting reputation that spills over to all other raptors, most of whom do not hunt domestic fowl at all. And yet we find them dammed! The black sparrowhawk likes to nest in eucalyptus trees, often in rural landscapes among the high human densities. Although much persecuted, its range has increased to areas where it could never have previously occurred.
Not that uncommon is a crow-black morph.
The next in size is the African goshawk whose status is not as well off as the black sparrowhawks. For its size, the females especially, have incredible strength and one of the biggest hind talons known to all hawks, perhaps because she often takes tree squirrels. It has a short middle toe and a hunched brutish look. They are only about the size of a pigeon. African goshawk prefers more natural thicker woodlands and nest in medium-sized trees well-hidden in drainage lines. But they can be found in urban and suburban gardens and in other very densely populated areas.
The Black Sparrowhawk. Image: Simon Thomsett and Laila Bahaa-el-din.
The Little Sparrowhawk is a minuscule but tough hawk, smaller than a starling. It is also to be found in towns with extensive tree cover and prefers indigenous Acacia and, for some reason the exotic jacaranda. They are especially fond of river beds and the acacias that fringe them. They specialise in catching small finches.
In 15 Acre plot in Karen on the outskirts of Nairobi, all three species used to nest. For so small and area to host so many species, implies niche partitioning, a different food supply and nesting requirements so that they do not overlap and compete with each other.
In Kenya there are three other resident and two migrant accipiters (a hawk subgroup). The Ovampo sparrowhawk departs from the norm by having rather long, thin and sharp pointed wings. It is a penultimate small to medium-sized bird hunter, although I have seen them take greenshanks, very fast bird that is bigger than the hawk itself.
The small Gabar goshawk appears inseparable with the small accipiters, but it is not. It is related to the Eastern-chanting and dark-chanting goshawk. The latter are beautiful hawks that stand proud on the top of trees on long legs that are ideally suited to run after prey when it enters cover. The late raptor expert Leslie Brown wrote that he saw an Eastern-chanting goshawk fly down a full-grown guinea fowl. I have seen a pair take a large scrub hare. Yet for the most they eat lizards, rodents and insects. They chant a beautiful fluting song that travels far across the plains at dawn. Both of our chanting goshawks have declined almost certainly due to habitat damage by livestock overgrazing.
Sitting within the chanting clan is the lizard-buzzard, a rather bland small hawk that is often seen in low, deciduous, hot and moist areas like the East African coast and around Lake Victoria. It can be very tame, and sits on telegraph lines in busy villages in West Africa where it will take lizards and never small chickens!
The “real” buzzards (named ‘buteo’) are medium-sizes typical hawks, that in highland Kenya for example, is most commonly exemplified by the augur Buzzard, possibly one of the most beneficial birds to the rural farmer. Almost all of its diet is rodents, and the destructive mole-rat is by far its most favourite meal. Augur buzzards are quite robust and are a little bigger than some smaller eagles. They have big feet and if needs be can take a hare. They have very short tails that make them wobble a bit as they fly, but they are superb flyers, able to stay aloft on violent winds with hardly a movement of the wings.
To see an auger buzzard take a stationary airborne perch on set wings during a near-hurricane-force wind before stooping down the cliff face below, shows how good they are!
All the buzzards were once so common, especially across East Africa, that not a kilometre could go by without one on a pole or post.
There is one other resident buteo: The rare mountain buzzard that prefers highland, woodland and moorlands where ice at night as usual. It perches in old-man's-beard festooned branches, in thick mist waiting for some very specific high-altitude rodents. This little-known Buzzard is possibly a left-behind-relative of the migrant Steppe buzzard that visit, sometimes in their thousands.
Harriers are light, thin hawks that bounce and weave a few metres above the ground in search of rodents, insects and small Birds. Between November and March we get thousands of pallid Montagues and Eurasian Marsh Harriers into East Africa.
The Cuckoo Hawk. Image: Simon Thomsett and Laila Bahaa-el-din
By contrast Africa’s native African harrier is extremely rare with only a few sightings a year in the now rare marshlands.
The formerly abundant yellow-billed kite has declined too, but it is still to be seen in urban areas. It is visited each year by the Black kite from Europe which often now outnumber the resident species. It was the raptor of my youth, my friends and I used to play with them on the football pitch over each school break by throwing them our sandwiches!
The gull-like black-shouldered kite is grey and white bird with huge orange-red eyes which hovers like a kestrel in search of its prey. In northern Kenya the delicate swallow-tailed kite looks like a small tern as it hunts insects over the arid deserts.
The owl-shaped, falcon-like Bat Hawk doses is the day in a shady tree until evening. It then ventures out, at what seems to be a languid, easy speed in search of emerging bats and the swift's that on their way to bed for the night. But their speed is phenomenal and they can catch half a dozen bats in 15 minutes and swallow them on the wing!Weird Hawk's include the cuckoo Hawk and its close relation the honey buzzard. The former resident likes chameleons and the other, a migrant, likes the grubs of hornets, wasps and bees.
The fish-hunting osprey is an uncommon visitor to our lakes and seas, although I have seen them far inland stealing mice off the black-shouldered kite!