COMMON NAME: Common Black Hawk
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Buteogallus anthracinus
IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS
A large, black hawk with one conspicuous white bar in the white-tipped tail. It is more robust-looking and has shorter, broader wings than the zone-tailed hawk. The young are largely rufous and buff, streaked and barred black. The adult is sooty black with a glaucous bloom, and, in worn plumage, a brownish tinge. The tail has one broad white bar in the middle. The eyes are brown; the cere, lores, and gape bright yellow. The legs are straw yellow, brighter on the toes; the bill is black, becoming yellow basally. The most commonly heard call is a nasal, high-pitched, cry alarm. In the early part of the breeding season it has, a three-syllabled whistle, uttered while soaring.
RANGE
The common black hawk is found in southern Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas south through Panama, and mostly in coastal areas in South America as far as northwestern Peru on the Pacific and northwestern Guyana on the Atlantic. It is also present in numerous coastal islands and also much of the Caribbean area. It is migratory only in the extreme north of its range.
HABITAT
Its favored habitat is coastal lowlands of mixed savannah, dunes, ponds, lagoons and grasslands. In some such areas, it is the most common hawk. It can also be seen along wooded streams even in hilly deserts, as in Arizona, sometimes up to 5,000 or 6,000 feet.
NESTING
The nuptial display seems to consist of lazy circling hour after hour at great height. It is then that their musical, whistling three-syllable call can be heard for many miles. The nests are placed in trees at heights of from 15 to 100 feet. The base of the nest is of sticks up to an inch in diameter, mixed with smaller sticks, coarse stems, and rubbish. It is lined with twigs and always with some green leaves and sprays. It is sometimes used for several years. One egg is usually laid -- coarse-grained, grayish white, spotted sparingly with dull or light brown.
FEEDING HABITS
Mostly crabs, frogs, snakes, fish, insects, rodents. In regions where they abound, crabs, either beach or land, are the favorite food. Elsewhere it commonly takes frogs, snakes, fish stranded in pools or even larger ones washed up dead on the beach and, less commonly, small or young mammals and slow-moving birds. Large insects, such as grasshoppers and caterpillars, are also eaten, and the bird can sometimes be seen following grass fires.
Information drawn from Eagles Hawks & Falcons of the World, by Leslie Brown & Dean Amadon, published in 1989 by The Wellfleet Press - isbn 1-55521-472-X
Other Web Resources
The Hawk Conservancy Trust, http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/
Migration data: GROMS (Global Register of Migratory Species)