All species › Birds of prey › Hawks, eagles and kites › Mountain Buzzard
Mountain Buzzard | Buteo oreophilus
Afrikaanse bergbuizerd | Busardo Montañés
The Mountain Buzzard is a forest buzzard of the mountains of East Africa, which within the region reaches only the montane forests of northern Malawi and the adjoining part of Zambia. It closely resembles the Steppe Buzzard, but is a resident that keeps close to the forest and circles above the forest edge.
Voice
A plaintive, mewing peee-oo, similar to the call of Common Buzzard but slightly higher and sharper, especially while circling above the forest in the morning.
Recording: isaac kilusu — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
42–50 cm, wingspan 100–115 cm. A medium-sized, compact buzzard. Adults are dark brown above; the underparts are white to cream with large, drop-shaped dark brown spots on the breast and flanks that often merge into a dark zone on the belly. The throat is pale with a dark central stripe. The tail is grey-brown with numerous narrow dark bars and a slightly broader subterminal band. In flight the underwing is pale with a dark carpal patch, dark wingtips and a finely barred trailing edge. Juveniles are browner and more streaked than spotted below.
Confusion species
Common Buzzard Buteo buteo, especially the Steppe Buzzard (vulpinus), is present as a migrant in the austral summer and is very similar; it is usually more rufous or browner below, with a pale band across the breast and a reddish tail, and hunts in open country rather than in forest. Juvenile Augur Buzzard Buteo augur is larger and broader-winged. African Goshawk Aerospiza tachiro is slimmer, with short, rounded wings and a long tail, and is barred rather than spotted below.
Habitat
Montane rainforest and forest patches above about 1500 m, often alongside montane grassland; locally also pine and eucalyptus plantations. In the south of its range, as in Malawi, it stays within the forest itself and hardly hunts in the open grassland beyond. It hunts from a perch at the forest edge for rodents, reptiles, frogs and large insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region only in Malawi: montane forests in the north, especially on the Nyika Plateau, in the Misuku Hills and on the Viphya Plateau, with a few records further south; probably also on the Zambian side of the Nyika Plateau. The southern limit of the range is poorly known. Beyond the region in the mountains of East Africa, from Ethiopia and South Sudan through Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Congo to Tanzania.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On the Nyika Plateau, check the edges of the forest patches (such as Chowo Forest) in the morning for a buzzard rising above the canopy. Any buzzard here in the austral winter (May–September) is almost certainly a Mountain Buzzard, as the Steppe Buzzard is then in Europe and Asia.
Conservation status
Near Threatened on the Red List, owing to the loss and fragmentation of montane forest in East Africa through logging, agriculture and fire. In Malawi its habitat is small and fragmented, but partly protected in Nyika National Park.
Scientific name
Buteo oreophilus | Hartert & Neumann, 1914
Hartert & Neumann described the species in 1914 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. oreophilus comes from the Greek oros, 'mountain', and philos, 'loving' — for its habitat in montane forest. The specimen the first description was based on came from Koritscha, Ethiopia.