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Red-Necked Buzzard | Buteo auguralis
Afrikaanse roodstaartbuizerd | Busardo Cuellirrojo
The Red-Necked Buzzard is a buzzard of West and Central Africa that reaches the region only in northern Angola. It is a bird of forest edges, clearings and cultivation with scattered trees, where it hunts quietly from a perch. For most visitors to southern Africa it is one of the least-known raptors of the region.
Voice
A plaintive, mewing peee-ah, very like the call of Common Buzzard, given especially while circling over the territory in the breeding season.
Recording: Paweł Szymański — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
42–50 cm, wingspan 100–120 cm. A medium-sized, compact buzzard. Adults have a rufous crown, nape and hindneck, a dark brown back and a bright rufous tail with a narrow black subterminal band. The throat and upper breast are dark and form a more or less complete breast band; the rest of the underparts are white with dark blotches on the flanks. In flight the underwing is white with a clear black carpal patch and a dark trailing edge. Juveniles are browner, with brown-streaked white underparts and a pale brown, finely barred tail without rufous.
Confusion species
Augur Buzzard Buteo augur is larger and heavier, with a slate-grey to black back, a shorter rufous tail and usually entirely white underparts without a breast band; it lives in open, hilly country in western Angola. Common Buzzard Buteo buteo, especially the Steppe Buzzard (vulpinus), can have a reddish tail but lacks the rufous neck and dark breast band. Lizard Buzzard Kaupifalco monogrammicus is smaller and grey, with a black throat stripe and a black tail with a white band.
Habitat
The edges of lowland and gallery forest, clearings in secondary forest, forest–savanna mosaics and cultivation with scattered tall trees. It hunts from a perch in a tree or on a pole for rodents, reptiles, frogs, large insects and young birds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in northern and north-eastern Angola, in the transition zone between rainforest and woodland (including Cabinda, Uíge and the Lunda provinces); the exact limit of its range is poorly known. Beyond the region from Senegal and Sierra Leone east to Ethiopia and Uganda, and south through Gabon and Congo.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look along roads through the forest–savanna mosaic of northern Angola for a buzzard on a dead branch at the forest edge; the rufous neck and tail are striking in good light. Every documented record with photographs is valuable, as its distribution and status in Angola are still poorly known.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread and locally common in West Africa; it seems to benefit from forest clearance as long as tall trees are left standing. Little is known about its numbers in Angola.
Scientific name
Buteo auguralis | Salvadori, 1866
Salvadori described the species in 1866 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Buteo was introduced in 1799 by De Lacépède. Buteo is the Latin word for a buzzard. auguralis is Latin for 'of the augur', from augur — a reference to the Roman diviners who read the future from the flight of birds. The specimen the first description was based on came from Ethiopia.