Chennai: A rare visitor has again turned up on Chennai’s coastline. Three birders recorded a Japanese Sparrowhawk at the Adyar estuary a couple of days ago, marking only the second time the species has been seen at the same spot.The first sighting at the estuary came in Nov last year. Then, in March this year, the small raptor was spotted at Auroville near Puducherry, said Kumaresan Chandrabose. He, along with Balakrishnan and Bharath, jointly recorded it in Adyar estuary two days ago. “This is the third sighting recorded in the country and second in Chennai,” Kumaresan said.What makes the records remarkable is the bird’s usual range. The Japanese Sparrowhawk is found only in Japan, Mongolia and China, far from the Indian coast.The individual spotted this time is an adult female. Available information showed that adult females are larger than their male counterparts, weighing around 111g–193g. They have brown upperparts but no red-brown barring on their underparts or sides. Adult females have white bodies and wing linings with brown-grey barring. They have yellow eyes and, like adult males, yellow legs and a stripe over the throat, but it is more obvious on adult females.T Murugavel, a raptor expert and project coordinator for Environment Monitoring and Action Initiating, said that, on and off, birders spot such vagrants in Chennai, especially in the Adyar Estuary, the Theosophical Society, and Guindy National Park (GNP).“The Brown Hawk-Owl that I sighted on The School campus a couple of decades ago was spotted in GNP a few years later. Hence, these habitats must be preserved with minimal anthropogenic pressures,” he added.
