Jerdon’s Bazas (Aviceda jerdoni) is a moderate-sized brown hawk with a thin white-tipped black crest usually held erect.
It is found in Southeast Asia. It inhabits foothills in the terai and is rarer in evergreen forests and tea estates.
Description
The Jerdon’s Bazas measure about 46 cm long. It is confusable with Crested Goshawk or the Crested Hawk-eagle in flight but can be distinguished by the longer upright crest, very broad and rounded paddle-shaped wings, and mostly plain and pale underparts.
It has a white chin and a bold black mesial stripe.
Distribution
It is resident in the terai of North India and foothills of the Eastern Himalayas from Eastern Nepal and Bengal duars to the Assam valley, western ghats in Southern India, southern Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, Singapore, and the Philippines
Habits
The bird is typically seen in pairs making aerial sallies; crest held erect. Occasionally, the birds may be seen in small family parties of 3 to 5 seen in flight near the edge of forests.
The birds indulge in ‘soaring and undulating’ display flights near the nest. Breeding season varies locally but the bird is known to breed almost the entire year with the exception of a few months around April and May.
Food includes lizards, grasshoppers, and other large insects. The stomach contents of a specimen collected in present-day Kurseong included agamid lizard, Japalura variegata, several longicorn beetles, and mantises.
References
- Rasmussen, PC and Anderton JC 2005. Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide. Vols. 1 and 2. Smithsonian Institution and Lynx Edicions, Washington, D.C. and Barcelona
- Ali, S and Ripley, SD 1983. Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan.Compact edition. Oxford University Press. Delhi
- Bird Checklist of Banladesh from the Website of Bangladesh Biodiversity Research Group Link
- Buij, R. 2003 Breeding behaviour of Jerdon’s Baza Aviceda jerdoni at Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia: the first nesting record for Sumatra. Forktail Vol. 19 Oriental Bird Club.
- Chan, YM, Wang, LK and We, YC (2007) Jerdon’s Baza Aviceda jerdoni in Singapore. BirdingASIA 8: 45-48
- del Hoyo, J., Elliot, A. and Sargatal, J. (1994) Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 2: NewWorldVultures to Guineafowl. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions.
- D’abreu ?? Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 20:518
