expansion drive

 Black Sparrowhawks

- JULIUS KOEN

A medium-sized raptor, the Black Sparrowhawk is classified as of Least Concern by The 2015 Red Data Book of Birds of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, thanks to the expansion of its range and an increase in its breeding density in certain areas. It preys on a variety of small and large birds, up to the size of guineafowl and geese.

In sub-Saharan Africa it is a relatively common and widespread species, but in South Africa it used to be restricted mostly to well-developed forest and woodland with suitable trees of a specific density and height for breeding, largely in the eastern half of the country. Some of the areas where it now occurs – and breeds – were previously unsuitable because they lacked the requisite tree cover. However, man-made changes such as the planting of exotic trees for forestry, the increase in these species outside

plantations and the maturing of gardens in towns and cities have altered the landscape, opening up new areas that fulfil the sparrowhawk’s requirements.

On the Cape Peninsula, the vegetation comprised various types of largely treeless fynbos with scattered patches of forest, an environment unsuitable for the tree-nesting Black Sparrowhawk. During the 1950s, however, forestry plantations were established on the peninsula and in surrounding areas and it was probably only after they started maturing that these raptors began to settle in some numbers in the Western Cape. The first breeding attempts were recorded from about 1993. Over the past 70 years the number of exotic trees in gardens and in and outside plantations has increased. Black Sparrowhawks are now well established in the Western Cape as a whole and numerous pairs are breeding in trees that have found a new home in fynbos soil.