Oriental Hobby

How to identify

Field marks

1. Black hood; throat pale
2. Underparts entirely orange-red
3. Upperparts blue-gray
4. Legs, eye-ring and cere bright yellow

Male, female and young

Sexes alike; juveniles have black streaks on the breast and a mottled back.

Similar species

Eurasian Hobby

Eurasian Hobby has orange-red only on the legs and lower belly; Oriental Hobby has entirely orange-red underparts.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: January–March · Most records: Thailand, China, India

Oriental Hobby has been recorded at 156 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 14 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Nameri National Park & SurroundingsIndia105 records
2. Buli-Subaim Road – mountain passIndonesia71 records
3. HongbengheChina56 records

Countries and regions with the most records

ThailandChinaIndiaIndonesiaPapua New GuineaVietnamMyanmar (Burma)Philippines

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The Oriental hobby (Falco severus) is a species of falcon typically 27–30 cm long. It can be found locally in the Indo-Gangetic Plain in the north of the Indian subcontinent, across the eastern Himalayas, east across southern China and the Philippines, and southwards through Indochina to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands; its distribution is patchy, being absent from Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, despite occurring both north and south of there. It has been recorded as a vagrant from Malaysia and southern India.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions