by Craig Brelsford
Founder, shanghaibirding.com
Crested Goshawk has sunk its talons into Shanghai. In the past year, records of the species have come from various locations throughout the city, in all four seasons. This past spring, a pair may have bred at Gongqing Forest Park.
It is remarkable that Crested Goshawk, a species of tropical and subtropical Asia, is even as far north as the Yangtze River. Most field guides show Accipiter trivirgatus indicus, the mainland form, occurring no farther north than Hangzhou. However, members of Shanghai Birding, the WeChat companion to this Web site, have reported Crested Goshawk in Nanjing and Nantong (Jiangsu). Other authorities record Crested Goshawk in Anhui, Henan, and even Beijing.
If the forest-loving goshawk has invaded the coastal, little-wooded, highly urbanized world of Shanghai, then it is not surprising that it would be using urban parks. Some of the parks of Shanghai, such as 102-year-old Zhongshan Park, where I found a pair of Crested Goshawk on 8 Sept., have massive trees and resemble old-growth forests.
Like the avifauna of islands, the birds of urban Shanghai’s green islands live in isolation. Except for stray cats and an occasional Siberian Weasel, urban residents Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Light-vented Bulbul, and Chinese Blackbird have few predators and are abundant.
With the imbalance comes an opportunity for raptors that can tolerate the noise and bustle of Earth’s Largest City. For Crested Goshawk, the pluses of urban living are apparently outweighing the minuses. It has come to feed on the rich store of passerines as well as mammals such as Pallas’s Squirrel.
On 16 May at Pudong’s Century Park, Shanghai Birding member Xueping Popp captured a Crested Goshawk exploiting the imbalance.
Shanghai Birding member Wāng Jìn Róng (汪进荣) was one of the first birders to record Crested Goshawk in Shanghai. Jìn Róng has seen the species at Zhongshan Park and Gongqing Forest Park as well as on the grounds of the Shanghai Zoo. Jìn Róng took the photo at the top of this post as well as the photos immediately below. All were taken at Zhongshan Park—the photo above this past May, the photos below last December.
The Crested Goshawk below, photographed by Shanghai Birding member Kai Pflug at Cape Nanhui, may have been in transit. Cape Nanhui has little tree cover beyond its famous microforests (where Kai got this photo), and Crested Goshawk is rarely recorded there.
Have you seen Crested Goshawk or other raptors in your city? Tell us your story in the comments below.
RESOURCES ON CRESTED GOSHAWK
Most field guides to Shanghai birds show outdated range maps for Accipiter trivirgatus indicus. Among them are Birds of East Asia (Brazil), A Field Guide to the Birds of China (MacKinnon & Phillipps), Handbook of the Birds of the World Vol. 2, and Raptors of the World (Ferguson-Lees & Christie).
The media below offer a clearer picture of the current status in China of Crested Goshawk.
Brelsford, Craig, moderator. Shanghai Birding, a WeChat group. The subject of Crested Goshawk generated discussions with various birders, among them Jiangsu birders Scoter and maidong, who had information about Crested Goshawk in Nanjing and Nantong. Hangzhou birder Cheng Qian reported on the distribution of Crested Goshawk in Zhejiang. Beijing-based member Paul Holt alerted us to scholarship on the changing distribution of Crested Goshawk and shared records of the species from Anhui and Beijing. Guangdong-based member Jonathan Martinez wrote about breeding Crested Goshawk in Hunan.
eBird. 2019. eBird Range Map—Crested Goshawk. eBird: An online database of bird distribution and abundance [Web application]. eBird, Ithaca, New York. (Accessed: 24 March 2024).
The eBird Range Map shows points on the Earth where checklists with Crested Goshawk have been submitted. The map shows Crested Goshawk in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Henan as well as Shanghai.
Fei, Y.-L., Lei, M., Zhang, Y. and Lu, C.-H. Geographic Distribution Change of Crested Goshawk (Accipiter trivirgatus). Chinese Journal of Zoology 45 (2010): 174–175.
