Broad-winged Hawks
Birds of Prey
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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.
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.
Copyright: Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.org
Relevant Web Resources: Broad-winged Hawk (Virtual Bird Field Guide) ... USGS ... Buteo.com
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