Brown Falcon

40-50 cm; span to 1.2 m. Female larger. Sits upright on dead trees, fence-posts, telephone poles or wires on long, skinny, greyish legs. Plumage ranges from dark, nearly uniform sooty brown in juveniles to light red-brown above, whitish below in old adults. Note four constant features: (1) double 'teardrop', enclosing pale cheek patch; (2) copious red-buff barring and scattered buff spots on flight and tail feathers; (3) somewhat glossy undersides of flightfeathers look markedly paler than wing linings; (4) in all plumages, always has red-brown to dark brown 'trousers', even when these are isolated from otherwise whitish breast and underparts. Cere, eye-ring and legs usually greyish, but some grey-crowned, pale morph birds have bright yellow cere, orbit and legs. Juvenile: yellow-brown wash on forehead, throat, rear part-collar and breast; irregular brown blotches below; upperparts with buff nape-streaks; buff tips to flight feathers. Singles, pairs, companies: perches upright, big-headed, narrow-shouldered on dead trees, posts, phone wires. Hovers clumsily: makes sloping glides to seize prey on ground; hunts on foot. Usually flies slowly, with deep, 'rowing' beats of broad, bluntly tapered gull-wings; soars on strongly upswept wings, tail fanned. Can fly fast on backswept wings, but lacks shallow flicker of typical falcon. Display noisy: dives spectacularly, dashes, cackling, about sky; wings in stiff V, body swinging.