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A photo of a Laggar Falcon (Falco jugger)
Laggar Falcon

Laggar Falcon

Falco jugger

The laggar falcon (Falco jugger), also known as the lugger falcon or jugger is a mid-sized bird of prey which occurs in the Indian subcontinent from extreme southeastern Iran, southeastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, through India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar. It resembles the lanner falcon but is darker overall, and has blackish "trousers" (tibiotarsus feathers). Fledglings have an almost entirely dark underside, and first-year subadult birds still retain much dark on the belly. This species belongs to a close-knit complex of falcons known as hierofalcons. In this group, there is ample evidence for rampant hybridization and incomplete lineage sorting which confounds analyses of DNA sequence data to a massive extent; molecular studies with small sample sizes can simply not be expected to yield reliable conclusions in the entire hierofalcon group. The radiation of the entire living diversity of hierofalcons seems to have taken place in the Eemian interglacial at the start of the Late Pleistocene, a mere 130,000-115,000 years ago; the laggar falcon represents a lineage that arrived at its present range out of eastern Africa by way of the Arabian Peninsula which during that time had a more humid climate than today. Laggar falcons used to be the most common falcons in the region, but numbers have declined markedly in recent times and today it is probably nowhere a common species anymore. The main threats are the intensification of pesticide use in the region and use as a decoy to trap large falcons.
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Laggar Falcons on Birda

Sightings

A map showing the sighting location
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Hemant Kirola
Saturday 28 Jan 2017 - 8:30am
India
A map showing the sighting location
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Daniel Sloan
Thursday 29 Dec 2016 - 6:07am
India
A map showing the sighting location
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Hemant Kirola
Friday 25 Dec 2015 - 7:16am
India
A map showing the sighting location
🦢
Hemant Kirola
Saturday 05 Dec 2015 - 10:00am
India
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