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African Cuckoo-Hawk
Live sightings near you, the range map, bar charts of when it is seen, and Macaulay Library photos and recordings.
African Cuckoo-Hawk
Aviceda cuculoides
The African cuckoo-hawk, or African baza, (Aviceda cuculoides) is a medium-sized raptor in the family Accipitridae so named because it resembles the common cuckoo, which is found in sub-Saharan Africa and along the eastern parts of Southern Africa. It prefers dense woodland and forest of either indigenous or exotic trees.
From the article African cuckoo-hawk on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The African cuckoo-hawk weighs 220–296 grams (0.48–0.65 lb) and has a wingspan of 91 cm (35 inches). The male is blackish-brown above with a grey mantle and chest with a blackish crest, the underparts are white marked with broad chestnut bars. The tail is black with three grey bars and grey and white tip. The females are browner with paler chestnut bars on the underparts. Distinctive in flight as a small raptor with a small head with broad, narrowly rounded wings and a medium length tail. Wingspan is just over double the body length, females are slightly larger than males.
Range & habitat
The African cuckoo-hawk is found across much of sub-Saharan Africa, and the following subspecies are recognised:
A. c. subsp. cuculoides – Senegal to southwestern Ethiopia and northern DRC A. c. subsp. batesi – Sierra Leone to Uganda and northern Angola A. c. subsp. verreauxii – Kenya to Namibia and eastern South Africa
Wikipedia: “Distribution and subspecies”
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Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
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Every page naming Aviceda cuculoides in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 5260.