Hobby (bird)

Hobbies
Eurasian hobby (Falco subbuteo) showing the typical color pattern
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Falconiformes
Family: Falconidae
Genus: Falco
Subgenus: Hypotriorchis
Boie, 1826
Species

6-9, see text.

A hobby is a fairly small, very swift falcon with long, narrow wings. There are four birds called hobby, and some others which, although termed falcon, are very similar. All specialise in being superb aerialists. Although they will take prey on the ground if the opportunity presents itself, most prey is caught on the wing; insects are often caught by hawking, and many different birds are caught in flight, where even the quick maneuvering swifts and swallows cannot escape a hobby.

The typical hobbies are traditionally considered a subgenus Hypotriorchis due to their similar morphology: they have ample amounts of dark slaty grey in their plumage; the malar area is black and the underside usually has lengthwise black streaks. The tails are all-dark or have only slight bands (White et al. 1994).

Monophyly of Hypotriorchis is supported by DNA sequence data, though the exact limits of the group are still uncertain. The hobbies seem to be one of the Falco lineages which emerged around the Miocene-Pliocene boundary some 8-5 million years ago and subsequently radiated - in this case throughout the Old World. Their relationship to the peregrine falcon group and the kestrels is not well resolved, however; taxa like the red-footed falcon appear in some respects intermediate between the kestrels and the typical hobbies.[1]

The following species are tentatively placed here:

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Helbig et al. (1994), Wink et al. (1998), Groombridge et al. (2002), Nittinger et al. (2005)

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, June 20, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.