Accipiter badius

The shikra (Tachyspiza badia) is a small bird of prey in the family Accipitridae found widely distributed in Asia and Africa where it is also called the little banded goshawk. The African forms may represent a separate species but have usually been considered as subspecies of the shikra. The shikra is very similar in appearance, as well as behavior, at least to some degree, to other species including the Chinese sparrowhawk (Tachyspiza soloensis, formerly Accipiter soloensis), Eurasian goshawk (Astur gentilis) and Eurasian sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). They have a sharp two-note call and exhibit the flap-and-glide flight style typical of Tachyspiza and Accipiter hawks. Their calls are imitated by drongos and the common hawk-cuckoo resembles it in plumage. This species was formerly placed in the genus Accipiter.

==Taxonomy== The shikra was formally described in 1788/1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the eagles, hawks and their relatives in the genus Falco and coined the binomial name Falco badius. Gmelin's description was based on the "brown hawk" from Ceylon that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the English naturalist Peter Brown. The shikra was formerly placed in the large and diverse genus Accipiter. In 2024 a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study of the Accipitridae confirmed earlier work that had shown that the genus was polyphyletic. To resolve the non-monophyly, Accipiter was divided into six genera. The genus Tachyspiza was resurrected to accommodate the shikra together with 26 other species that had previously been placed in Accipiter. The resurrected genus had been introduced in 1844 by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup. The word Tachyspiza combines the Ancient Greek ταχυς (takhus) meaning "fast" with σπιζιας (spizias) meaning "hawk". The specific epithet badia is Latin meaning "chestnut-coloured" or "brown".