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Eurasian Sparrowhawks are small birds of prey. Their highly cryptic plumage is dimorphic, i.e. males and females are slightly different. Male Eurasian Sparrowhawks have an all slate-grey crown and back, with a darker-grey supercilium and a barred pattern in two shades of grey on the tail. Also the flight feathers are a darker shade of grey than the rest of the back/wings. The cheeks and the front are finely barred reddish-brown on off-white, with the barring usually more prominent on the chest than the belly. Vent and undertail coverts are basically off-white, with hardly any barring. Females are noticeably bigger and more massive than males. They do not have any reddish-brown on throat, chest or cheeks. Instead, the entire front is finely barred mid-grey on off-white. They have inconspicuous off-white supercilia. Otherwise they resemble males. The irises of both sexes are yellowish-orange. The hooked beak is yellow with a dark-grey tip; the legs and feet are yellow. Juvenile Sparrowhawks roughly resemble females. However, their front is coarsely barred with bold dark-grey chevrons and their plumage is brownish-grey, rather than slate-grey.

"Raptors" (or "birds of prey"), most prominently, but also some species of waders, show a pronounced "dimorphism", i.e. a difference between male and female birds - not just in the appearance of the plumage, but in other, important properties, such as size or strength. Here we explain why.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Eurasian Sparrowhawk is available HERE .

There are 6 races of Eurasian Sparrowhawks, part of which are migratory, while others are sedentary. Their distribution covers a wide range across much of Eurasia and parts of northern Africa. Nominate race "nisus" is the most widespread by far, breeding from Europe and west Asia to mid-latitude western Siberia and Iran; northern populations spend the winters in the Mediterranean, North-east Africa, Arabia and Pakistan. The migratory race "nisosimilis" breeds from central and eastern Siberia, eastward to Kamchatka and Japan, and southward to northern China. They spend the winters in an area spanning from Pakistan and India eastwards through South-East Asia and southern China to Korea and Japan. The migratory race "melaschistos" breeds in mountainous areas from Afghanistan through the Himalayas and southern Tibet to western China. They spend the winters in the plains of South Asia. Race "punicus" is resident in North-west Africa, to the North of the Sahara desert.

In Europe Eurasian Sparrowhawks, race "nisus", are found as permanent residents throughout, except in central Scandinavia, where they are breeding migrants, and northern Scandinavia, where they are not found at all. On some Mediterranean and Atlantic islands separate races are found ("wolterstorffi" on Corsica and Sardinia; "granti" on Madeira and the Canary Islands).

Eurasian Sparrowhawks have a preference for open deciduous woodland, for both hunting and breeding.

Race "nisus"