Sunday, August 19, 2018

Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk

We saw a goshawk in Etosha NP, Namibia and I've been struggling to determine whether it is a southern pale chanting goshawk or a dark chanting goshawk. We saw an eastern pale chanting goshawk in Kenya four years ago, so I knew it was a goshawk. This post helped describe the differences between the two: (a) the dark chanting is darker gray than the pale chanting; (b) the dark chanting has a gray, not a white rump (I couldn't see the rump); (c) the dark chanting is smaller (I didn't have anything to compare it to); and (d) the dark chanting is found in well wooded savannah as opposed to savanna, semi-desert and karoo scrub (this was in Etosha, so score one for the pale chanting). 
Southern pale chanting goshawk.
Description: The head and upper breast are pale gray and the rest of the underparts are barred with dark gray and white. The bill is red at the base and dark gray at the tip. The cere, facial skin and long legs are red. It has black primary flight feathers. From below the tail is white with black barring. One other fact, aside from the terrain helped tip the scale, the tail of the dark chanting has broad black and white stripes and the picture of the bottom of the tail looked more like the picture of the pale chanting than the dark chanting. 

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