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Savanna Hawk
Live sightings near you, the range map, bar charts of when it is seen, and Macaulay Library photos and recordings.
Savanna Hawk
Buteogallus meridionalis
The savanna hawk (Buteogallus meridionalis) is a large raptor found in open savanna and swamp edges. It was formerly placed in the genus Heterospizias. It breeds from Panama and Trinidad south to Bolivia, Uruguay and central Argentina. There are also reports of it in California, from 1973 in Alameda County and from 1974 in San Diego County.
From the article Savanna hawk on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The savanna hawk is 46–61 cm (18–24 in) in length and weighs 845 g (29.8 oz). The adult has a rufous body with grey mottling above and fine black barring below. The flight feathers of the long broad wings are black, and the tail is banded black and white. The legs are yellow. The call is a loud scream keeeeru. Immature birds are similar to the adults but have darker, duller upperparts, paler underparts with coarser barring, and a whitish supercilium. This species perches very vertically, and its legs are strikingly long.
What it does
The savanna hawk feeds on small mammals, small birds, lizards, snakes, toads, frogs, eels, other fish, crabs, roots, spiders, and large insects (such as grasshoppers). It usually sits on an open high perch from which it swoops on its prey, but will also hunt on foot, and several birds may gather at grass fires.
Wikipedia: “Food and feeding”
Listen
Looking for field recordings…
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Buteogallus meridionalis in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 5235.