Common Black Hawk
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| Buteogallus anthracinus (Deppe, 1830) |
The Common Black Hawk, Buteogallus anthracinus, is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes the eagles, hawks and Old World vultures.
The Common Black Hawk is a resident breeding bird in the tropical New World, from the southwestern U.S. through Central America to Venezuela, Peru, Trinidad and the Lesser Antilles.
This is a mainly coastal bird of mangrove swamps, estuaries and adjacent dry open woodland, which builds a large stick nest in a mangrove tree, and usually lays one dark-blotched whitish egg.
The adult Common Black Hawk is 43-53cm long and weighs 930g. It has very broad wings, and is mainly black. The short tail is black with a single broad white band and a white tip. The bill is black and the legs and cere are yellow.
Sexes are similar, but immature birds are dark brown above with spotting and streaks. Their underparts are buff to whitish with dark blotches, and the tail has a number of black and white bars.
The Common Black Hawk feeds mainly on crabs, but will also take small vertebrates and eggs. This species is often seen soaring, with occasional lazy flaps, and has a talon-touching aerial courtship display. The call of the Common Black Hawk is a distinctive piping spink-speenk-speenk-spink-spink-spink.
The shorter-winged Mangrove Black Hawk is considered to be subspecies of Common Black Hawk by some authors.
[edit] Protection status
The Common Black Hawk is protected in the far north of its range (in the USA) under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.[1]
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Buteogallus anthracinus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Birds of Venezuela by Hilty, ISBN 0-7136-6418-5
- Birds of Trinidad and Tobago by ffrench, ISBN 0-7136-6759-1
