Jerdon's Baza

Jerdon's baza is a moderate-sized brown hawk, 41–48cm long with a wingspan of about 117cm and a weight of about 350g, with a thin, white-tipped black crest that it usually holds erect. In flight it can be confused with the crested goshawk or changeable hawk-eagle, but it has a longer upright crest, very broad, rounded paddle-shaped wings and mostly plain pale underparts, with a white chin and a bold black central throat stripe. It is named after the surgeon-naturalist Thomas C. Jerdon (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in foothill forest and less often in evergreen forest and tea estates. It is usually seen in pairs making aerial sallies after prey, and occasionally in family parties of three to five near forest edges. Several subspecies are recognised across its large range, which extends from South Asia to the Philippines and Sulawesi. In India it is a resident forest bird with a moderate range; SoIB 2023 has too little data for a trend and rates it a Low conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).