The grey-faced buzzard (''Butastur indicus'') is an

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

n bird of prey. It is typically in length, making it a small-sized

raptor Raptor or RAPTOR may refer to: Animals The word "raptor" refers to several groups of bird-like dinosaurs which primarily capture and subdue/kill prey with their talons. * Raptor (bird) or bird of prey, a bird that primarily hunts and feeds on v ...

. It breeds in

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

; it winters in South-east Asia. It is a bird of open land. It eats lizards, small mammals and large insects. The adult has a grey head, breast and neck, white throat, black moustaches and mesial stripes, brown back and upperwings, and brown bars on white underparts and underwings. The juvenile is brown and mottled above, pale below with brown streaks, and has a broad white

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

and brown face.

Taxonomy

The gray-faced buzzard was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich Gmelin , fields = , workplaces = University of GöttingenUniversity of Tübingen , alma_mater = University of Tübingen , doctoral_advisor = Philipp Friedrich GmelinFerdinand Christoph Oetinger , academic_advisors = , doctora ...

in his revised and expanded edition of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

's ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. He placed it with the eagles, hawks and relatives in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

'' Falco'' and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Falco indicus''. Gmelin based his account on the "Javan hawk" that had been described in 1781 by John Latham from a specimen in the Leverian collection that had been obtained in February 1780 at Princes Island off the westernmost cape of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

during Captain Cook's last voyage. The gray-faced buzzard in now one of four species placed in the genus ''

Butastur ''Butastur'' is a genus of birds of prey in the family Accipitridae. Taxonomy and species The genus ''Butastur'' was introduced in 1843 by the English naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson with the white-eyed buzzard as the type species. The genus ...

'' that was introduced in 1843 by the English naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson. The genus name is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsButeo'' introduced by

Bernard Germain de Lacépède Bernard-Germain-Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède or La Cépède (; 26 December 17566 October 1825) was a French naturalist and an active freemason. He is known for his contribution to the Comte de Buffon's great work, the ...

for the buzzards and ''Astur'' introduced by Lacépède for the goshawks. The specific epithet ''indicus'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "Indian". The gray-faced buzzard has no recognised

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

Description

The males and females of the grey faced buzzard are the same in coloration. Adults are red & brown on the upper part of the chest while the chest is brown or dark brown. The chest contains dark down bars across the abdomen. The most infrequent color scheme is the full brown bird's also known as dark morph colored. The small-sized raptor is typically long. Wings are pointed and narrow; feathers are thin and look transparent when in flight. the tail is ashy brown with horizontal bars on the tail, the iris is bright yellow. Juveniles are often less reddish, with dark brown bars on the abdomen. Also, the face and eye color is brown with a buff color.

Distribution and habitat

The majority of the species are found in Japan or more specifically,

Satoyama is a Japanese term applied to the border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land. Literally, ''sato'' () means village, and ''yama'' () means hill or mountain. Satoyama have been developed through centuries of small-scale ...

. The area consists of many different environments; woodlands, paddy-fields, streams, and grasslands. In its breeding range, the buzzard is found in

coniferous Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All extant ...

and mixed evergreen forests in mountains, at forest edges, fields, meadows, marshes, and around agricultural lands.

Migration

Grey-faced buzzards utilize the world's only oceanic flyway for raptor migration. Wind support and geographic features (i.e. islands) enable the birds to migrate in an oceanic flyway. Grey-faced buzzards arrive in the breeding grounds of Japan from late March to early April. It is assumed that males arrive in the breeding grounds and wait for the female to arrive, while defending their territory. After the female arrives then, nest building and

copulation Sexual intercourse (or coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion and thrusting of the penis into the vagina for sexual pleasure or reproduction.Sexual intercourse most commonly means penile–vaginal penetrat ...

begin. Grey faced buzzards set out on their autumn migration and head south in flocks from late September to mid-October. In Taiwan they are a common spring and summer migrant, and a few remain for the winter on

Lanyu Island Orchid Island, also known by other names, is a volcanic island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan Island. The island is part of Taiwan. It is separated from the Batanes of the Philippines by the Bashi Channel of the Luzon Strait. It is gove ...

. As with most buzzards, these birds utilize rising air currents to gain altitude and cover great distances by soaring during migration. Taiwan lies on a major migration route for the grey faced buzzard, and large numbers may be seen moving southward in October along the Hengchun Peninsula, and northward in late March and early April along the terraced mountains of

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiw ...

and

Changhua Changhua (Hokkien POJ: ''Chiong-hòa'' or ''Chiang-hòa''), officially known as Changhua City, is a county-administered city and the county seat of Changhua County in Taiwan Province of the Republic of China. For many centuries the site was h ...

Behavior and ecology

Food and feeding

During the breeding season the male buzzards spend up to 90% of their day perched searching for prey. Their hunting perch us usually located around 500 meters away from the nest. They feed on frogs,

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

, lizards, insects, small rodents and occasionally other birds. They perch on a tree or a utility pole adjacent to an open habitat, such as rice fields, cropland, and clearings, and swoop down to capture with their feet small animals occurring in

. They adopt a search and ambush hunting method to waste less time and energy but still receive enough to survive. The birds actively change its diets to fit the foraging site of a particular season. The main

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...

types which characterized to foraging areas of the buzzards varied over the course of the breeding season from paddy fields to levees and grass-arable fields, and eventually to wooded areas. Along with this shift, the main prey of the buzzards changes from frogs to insects. In paddy fields, frogs and small mammals are frequently captured. A variety of prey including frogs, small mammals, lizards, snakes and insects were taken at levees and grass-arable fields. Insects and frogs were captured in woodland areas.

Breeding

During the breeding season the grey faced buzzard builds a small stick nest placed in a tree. The tree most of the time being a Japanese tree. In China, nests were typically located in dense coniferous or broad-leafed forest patches with thick shrubs, steep slopes, and a northerly slope aspect. The nest is lined with grass and leaves. Clutch size is 3-4 white eggs with rusty or reddish-brown spots. They breed in eastern China, eastern Russia, Japan, and in winter mainly in Indochina, Malaysia and the Philippines. The same nest is sometimes used every year until the need of reconstruction arises. Females mostly incubate eggs and nestlings. Males relieve females briefly a few times a day. Eggs hatch from late May to early June about a month after they were laid. Nestlings fledge from late June to early July about 35 days after hatching. Fledglings are fed by the parent birds around the nest for about two weeks, and then become independent, starting to move a long distance.

Relationship to humans

Historically, the greatest threat to the grey-faced buzzard in Taiwan has been the uncontrolled hunting of the species in the Baguashan and Hengchun Peninsula areas. Hunting and trapping of grey-faced buzzard in the Baguashan and Hengchun Peninsula areas has gone on for Generations
The Wild Bird Society of Japan
and other concerned organizations successfully brought about legislation in Japan that effectively put an end to the importation of raptor skins and the demand for Taiwan grey faced buzzard skins faded.

Conservation status

Grey-faced buzzards were designated as a "Vulnerable" species in December 2006 in Japan. Few concrete protective measures have been taken, however, partly because about 90% of the breeding grounds are privately owned and 75% are not legally protected for wildlife. A basic plan for "Creating a wood Grey-faced buzzards can live" by Toyota City of Aichi Pref. is remarkable. In the Toyota natural Observation Woods, which contain a Satoyama Landscape with Yatsuda, Toyota City has taken the initiative in creating the habitat of frogs grey-faced buzzards prey on and maintaining their foraging grounds by weeding and water management of private fallow rice fields. The conservation of birds of prey with large home range, such as grey-faced buzzards would be promoted by the active involvement of local and regional governments in maintaining an entire local ecosystem including private land in various regions of Japan.

References

External links

with photographs.
The Wild Bird Society of Japan
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1270171

grey-faced buzzard The grey-faced buzzard (''Butastur indicus'') is an Asian bird of prey. It is typically in length, making it a small-sized raptor. It breeds in Manchuria, Korea and Japan; it winters in South-east Asia. It is a bird of open land. It eats liza ...

Birds of Japan Birds of Korea Birds of Manchuria