Little Sparrowhawk
ID Features: A tiny, secretive and inconspicuous hawk that flies quickly and nimbly within woodland thickets and forest while hunting small birds, other vertebrates, and insects. It has a very distinctive white rump and two pale spots on the upper tail. Call is a distinctive high-pitched, down-and-upslurred "chy-lip". Similarly-plumaged African Goshawk is much larger; Red-thighed Sparrowhawk is similar in size but prefers dense rainforest, is more rufous below, and generally lacks barring on the underside.
Habitat: All kind of forests.
Locations: Namibia, Kenya, South Africa
African Goshawk
ID Features: A widespread medium-sized African hawk with yellow eyes and legs. Highly variable, both by age, sex, and geographically. Gray, gray-brown, or brown on the back and head, with a white throat. The underparts very from solidly red to barred red to barred brown. Often shows large white spots on top of the black tail. In a large swath of the range in East and Central Africa, there is an all-dark morph. During the breeding season it will soar high in the sky uttering a short sharp "chwik" call in aerial display; the call is given every 2-3 seconds for over a minute at a time. Similarly-plumaged Little Sparrowhawk is much smaller. Visually very similar to Chestnut-flanked Sparrowhawk in areas where they overlap, but African Goshawk is much larger and far more common. Can also be confused with Long-tailed Hawk, but African Goshawk has a shorter tail, darker upperparts, and a clean white throat.
Habitat: Breeds in rainforest, monsoon forest, riverine forest, thickets, woodland, and exotic plantations, but it has been known to wander widely into more open country.
Locations: Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania
