Papuan harrier
species of bird
The Papuan harrier (Circus spilothorax) is a bird of prey native to New Guinea which belongs to the harrier genus Circus. It was classified as a subspecies of the eastern marsh harrier (Circus spilonotus) of eastern Asia.
It is thinly scattered across the whole of New Guinea except for the Vogelkop peninsula in the west. There are several unconfirmed reports from Australia but the bird can easily be confused with the swamp harrier. It inhabits grassland and wetlands up to 3800 m above sea-level. It hunts low over open ground searching for small mammals, birds and lizards.
The adult male is usually silvery-grey with black head, throat, back and wing-markings and white underparts. Adult females are brown with a pale rump, barred tail and streaked underparts. Juveniles are blackish-brown with cream-coloured markings on the head, more extensive in the female. The length of the bird varies from 47 to 54 cm; females are larger than the males.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1851474. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Papuan harrier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.