Broad-winged Hawk

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iBroad-winged Hawk

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Falconiformes
Family:	Accipitridae
Genus:	Buteo
Species:	B. platypterus

Binomial name

Buteo platypterus
(Vieillot, 1823)

The Broad-winged Hawk, Buteo platypterus, is a small hawk, 43 cm long and weighing 450 g.

Adults have short broad wings, dark brown upperparts and evenly-spaced black and white bands on the tail. There are two colour forms:

Light morph birds are pale on the underparts and underwing. They have thick red bars on the belly.
Dark morph birds are a darker brown on both upperparts and underparts. They are much less common than the light-coloured variant.

A Broad-winged Hawk at Isle Royale National Park

Their breeding habitat is wooded areas in eastern North America. They build a stick nest relatively low in a large tree.

These birds are a long distance migrants, wintering from southern Florida through Central to Peru and northern Brazil. They travel in large flocks during migration.

These birds wait on a perch and swoop down on prey, also sometimes flying in search of prey. They mainly eat small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, small birds and large insects.

Although this bird's numbers are relatively stable, populations are declining in some parts of its breeding range due to forest fragmentation.

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2004). Buteo platypterus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 10 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
Hilty, Birds of Venezuela, ISBN 0-7136-6418-5
Stiles and Skutch, A guide to the birds of Costa Rica ISBN 0-08-149600-4