This Besra (Accipiter virgatus) was photographed just a few weeks in the past in a tree it typically visits within the morning. The Besra is a forest chicken however is understood to frequent perches within the open at the moment of day. It’s extensively distributed in southern Asia.
It is just in current a long time that the taxonomy and identification of sparrowhawks has been labored out. Within the Nineteen Sixties the Besra was fully unknown to Hong Kong birders. That’s as a result of there have been solely although to be two species visiting Hong Kong: the Japanese Sparrowhawk (Accipiter gularis) and the Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Each have been regarded as passage migrants. The Japanese Sparrowhawk and the Besra have been regarded as geographical variants of the identical species. When it was realised that two completely different species have been concerned, and it was discovered that one is definitely resident in Hong Kong (Besra) and the opposite totally migratory (Japanese) did the place change into clear. The Eurasian remains to be a uncommon migrant.
Identification of the Besra as a Hong Kong chicken, additionally cleared up our scratching of heads in earlier years, beginning in 1966, as we noticed show flights of sparrowhawks above Hong Kong. We couldn’t determine between the 2 acknowledged to be there on the time. They appeared too large for Japanese and never within the season for migrants of both species. And would migrants be displaying?
The Besra will need to have change into extra frequent as there are increasingly bushes and bushes in contrast with the hillsides devastated for many years by the gathering of firewood for cooking in the course of the Japanese occupation. The newest area information has them as ‘pretty frequent, widespread resident and presumably autumn migrant’ whereas in 2005 it was down as ‘a scarce resident, presumably with elevated numbers in autumn’.