• Geobirds Local
• Identify Birds
• Birding Resources

Photo credit: Laura Erickson

Click for explorable range map

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.

References

* Hilty, Birds of Venezuela, ISBN 0-7136-6418-5
* Stiles and Skutch, A guide to the birds of Costa Rica ISBN 0-0814-9600-4

External link

* Broad-winged Hawk videos on the Internet Bird Collection