Howdy, friends.  Our bird this week is the crested honey buzzard, which like our subject last week is a member of the Perninae subfamily of raptors.  It is larger than its European relative, and like the European honey buzzard, is very sexually dimorphic.  Looks like I didn’t get a chance to cover that last week, and this week most of the striking photos I could find were of females, identifiable by their bright yellow eyes.  If you want to look up some less-cool photos of males, I am powerless to stop you.  

These birds live in India and large portions of the rest of southeast Asia, and migrate to Japan and Siberia during the summer to breed.  It looks like there are also small populations in the middle east, coincidentally around the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, where all that well-thought out foreign policy is currently happening.  The birds don’t breed there, I’m honestly not sure what they are doing so far from home.  I was able to find an academic paper that said this small population numbers about 100 individuals during the winter season.  They presumably depart once spring comes.   

Last week we talked about how the European honey buzzard cannot fly long distances over water for lack of favorable winds, and must use geographic chokepoints between Europe and Africa to complete its migration.  In the case of the crested variety, it is able to complete the 700km (435 mi) flight over the East China Sea between Asia and Japan because during the autumn, when the birds are heading west, the prevailing wind is blowing in the same direction.  

The crested honey buzzard likes to live in hilly lowlands, rarely being found above 1,800 m (5,900 ft).  It prefers forests with clearings, no doubt to allow it to zero in on its tiny prey.  Like our subject last week, it specializes in eating flying social insects, but specializes further in preferring the larvae, pupae and honeycombs of social wasps.  It has several adaptations to facilitate this preference.  It has short toes and long talons, which allow it to dig up underground wasp nests.  It also has a long beak and a face set far back from it, which similarly allows it to reach deep into the ground to feed.  Its tongue is specially grooved to allow it to slurp up grubs from honeycomb.  Like our subject last week, it has small and dense feathers around its face to protect it from stings, and appears to have a similar as-yet unidentified chemical gunk on its feathers which is thought to do the same.  Scientists have observed that wasps will attack bears over honey buzzards given the chance, which lends credence to the theory that the birds have some kind of defense that the bears do not.  The study also showed that most stingers deposited in the bird’s feathers did not succeed in piercing the skin, so that convex “armor” shape in which the feathers grow appears to have some success at protecting the birds.  

The crested honey buzzard will build a nest of sticks 40–80 cm (16–31 in) across, in tress common to the area where it is staying.  It uses coniferous in the northern parts of its range, and banyan, mango, casuarina or coconut on the Indian subcontinent.  I was not able to find any further details about its breeding habits, but will go ahead and assume that nest building, brooding over eggs and feeding chicks is done by both members of the breeding pair, as was the case last week.  The IUCN considers the crested honey buzzard as “of least concern” due to its gargantuan range, 38,200,00 square kilometers, although I should note that multiple sources describe this bird as unobtrusive and hard to spot outside the breeding season.  Threats include deforestation, wind power, and climate change, which impacts its ability to cross large bodies of water during its migration.

Have a good weekend, everyone.  Take some time to unplug if you get the chance.  I keep having to remind myself that freaking out is not the same thing as helping, because it can really feel like it is sometimes.  

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