The Juvenile Plumage of the Grey Goshawk Accipiter novaehollandiae in Tropical Australia

Abstract

Three juvenile grey-morph Grey Goshawks Accipiter novaehollandiae, observed in the Top End of the Northern Territory, differed from literature descriptions of the juvenile grey morph in being browner dorsally and more heavily marked ventrally. These birds, and published and hitherto unpublished photographs of another individual, were seemingly intermediate towards the juvenile plumage of the Brown Goshawk A. fasciatus or of some subspecies of the Variable Goshawk A. hiogaster. These plumage types suggest that juvenile Grey Goshawks are more heavily pigmented in the tropics than in south-eastern Australia.