The Enigma Buzzard

The late Leslie Brown, doyen of African raptorphiles, remarks in his African Birds of Prey (1970) that he found the status of the European Honey Buzzard in Africa puzzling. In his own experience he never saw one in Kenya during his 25 years’ residence there. He correctly surmised that birds from Western Europe disappeared into the forests of West Africa and the Congo Basin. This has been recently authenticated by several birds from Germany being tracked with telemetry. But what about the eastern population that crosses into Africa via Eilat? For example, in May 2015 as many as 450 000 individuals were recorded in two days. Any birds seen in southern Africa would be derived from this source.

- Peter Steyn

In my own experience in Zimbabwe from 1961 to 1977, during which time I travelled extensively to every corner of the country, I saw only one. This was on my home patch near Falcon College, 56 kilometres south of Bulawayo. This memorable sighting was on 23 October 1964 and I made meticulous notes in which I recorded the small, pigeon-like head, the relatively large yellow eye, the slit-like nostrils and the scale-like facial feathering that extended to the base of the bill. I did not see another one until I returned to live in Cape Town.

In the Western Cape, European Honey Buzzards were considered rare in the 1980s and 1990s, but as we entered the 2000s the number of sightings began to increase. In 2014 Trevor Hardaker started to keep records and in Promerops 302 (August 2015) he summarised the situation. Were there more birds or was this because of the increased number of birders who had become aware of them? Maybe it was a combination of both factors. Suffice it to say that in recent times during summer Trevor’s SA Rare Bird News reports never fail to contain a number of records from throughout southern Africa. One inclines to the view that they have genuinely increased, but why? One suggestion from Caroline Howes in African Birdlife 7(2): 64 is that habitat deterioration farther north in their eastern distribution has caused them to move south, but this would be difficult to prove.