Slate-coloured Hawk

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Slate-coloured Hawk

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Falconiformes
Family:	Accipitridae
Genus:	Leucopternis
Species:	L. schistaceus

Binomial name

Leucopternis schistaceus
(Sundevall, 1851)

The Slate-coloured Hawk (Leucopternis schistaceus) is a species of bird of prey in the Accipitridae family, the hawks, eagles, and allies.

It is found in regions of northern South America, in the Amazon Basin of Brazil, and Amazonian Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia; also central Venezuela, and in the northeast, French Guiana. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical swamps.

1 Overview
- 1.1 Distribution
  - 1.1.1 Range: Amazon Basin, Orinoco region, French Guiana
2 Source
3 External links

[edit] Overview

It is a medium to large size bird, medium slate-gray in color, with contrasting brite-white horizontal banding on its tail feathers; also a medium-white breast with vertical black markings. It has a large orange cere at the base of its beak, and large yellow eyes.

[edit] Distribution

[edit] Range: Amazon Basin, Orinoco region, French Guiana

Being a hunter of water edges, for frogs, crabs, snakes, small mammals, etc, the main range of the Slate-coloured Hawk is in a wide corridor along the main course of the Amazon River in the central Amazon Basin. This corridor is about 700 km wide, and includes the confluence areas downstream of the major rivers: Rio Negro, Madeira, Tapajós, Xingu, and the outlet section of the Tocantins River in the southeast Basin's neighboring river system, (Araguaia-Tocantins). Upstream the range widens.

The upstream range widens into the southwestern and northwestern Basin to the Andean foothills, and from the south includes, northern Amazonian Bolivia, eastern Peru and Ecuador, and southeastern Amazonian Colombia. In the extreme northwest, the range narrows to include only central-northeastern Colombia, and a mid-river section of the Caribbean north-flowing Orinoco River drainage of central-southwestern Venezuela, (the section of the Colombia-Venezuela border). The Slate-coloured Hawk is absent from the north-central Amazon Basin, and the Guiana Shield to the Guianan coast; the species does range into French Guiana in the northeast, from the Amazon River outlet, north through Brazil's Amapá state, as well as Marajó Island, Ilha de Marajo.