Feather & Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify feathers by species — with feather type, plumage, colours, size, habitat, and how to tell them apart in the field.
Red-shouldered Hawk
The Red-shouldered Hawk is a woodland buteo with rufous-barred underparts, reddish shoulder patches, a boldly black-and-white banded tail, and a translucent pale crescent near the wingtip visible in flight.
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Roadside Hawk
A small, common, and conspicuous hawk of the Neotropics, often seen perched along roadsides, identified by its gray-brown chest contrasting with a rufous-barred belly and narrowly banded tail.
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Ferruginous Hawk
The Ferruginous Hawk is the largest North American buteo, with rich rufous ('ferruginous') back and leg feathers, a pale head and underparts, and a whitish tail, adapted to hunting over open, arid grassland.
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Harris's Hawk
A dark chestnut-brown desert hawk notable for its social, cooperative hunting behavior, with a bold black-and-white tail pattern and chestnut shoulder patches.
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Gray Hawk
A slim, pale gray hawk of cottonwood-lined streams in the borderlands, notable for its finely barred plumage and slender, accipiter-like proportions among the buteos.
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Red-tailed Hawk
The Red-tailed Hawk is a widespread North American buteo best known for its brick-red adult tail, pale underparts with a dark belly band, and broad, rounded wings often seen soaring over open country and roadsides.
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Swainson's Hawk
Swainson's Hawk is a long-winged buteo of open grassland and prairie, typically showing a dark breast bib, paler belly, and notably dark flight feathers contrasting against paler underwing coverts, distinct from the broader-winged buteos it shares range with.
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Cooper's Hawk
Cooper's Hawk is a woodland accipiter with short rounded wings and a long, broadly banded tail, adult plumage showing blue-grey upperparts and fine rufous barring below, well suited to fast pursuit through trees.
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Ornate Hawk-Eagle
A powerful Neotropical forest raptor with a bold black crest, rufous cheeks and neck, and crisp black-and-white barring across the underparts, built for hunting within the forest canopy.
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Sharp-shinned Hawk
The Sharp-shinned Hawk is North America's smallest accipiter, with short rounded wings, a long square-tipped banded tail, and adult plumage of slate-grey upperparts with fine rufous barring below, built for darting through dense cover.
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Rough-legged Hawk
The Rough-legged Hawk is an Arctic-breeding buteo with a pale tail base and dark terminal band, a dark belly patch, and dark carpal patches on the underwing, plus legs feathered fully to the toes for insulation.
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Brown Hawk-Owl
The Brown Hawk-Owl is a widespread Asian owl with a hawk-like, tuftless head, dark brown upperparts, and rufous-streaked white underparts.
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Broad-winged Hawk
The Broad-winged Hawk is a compact, forest-nesting buteo with rufous-barred underparts and a short tail marked by bold, wide black-and-white bands, famous for gathering in enormous migrating flocks called 'kettles.'
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Papuan Hawk-Owl
A little-known, long-tailed forest owl endemic to New Guinea, with a hawk-like reduced facial disc and boldly barred underparts.
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Zone-tailed Hawk
A blackish hawk that closely mimics the flight silhouette and dark coloring of the Turkey Vulture, distinguished mainly by its banded tail feathers.
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White-tailed Hawk
A handsome open-country hawk with a gray back, white underparts, rufous shoulders, and a crisp white tail marked by a single bold black band near the tip.
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Northern Hawk-Owl
A falcon-like, day-hunting owl of the boreal forest, with a long tail, pointed wings, and boldly barred underparts, often seen perched conspicuously atop treetops scanning for prey.
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Common Black Hawk
A stocky, broad-winged hawk of wooded streams and mangroves, easily told from other dark raptors by its nearly all-black plumage crossed by a single wide white tail band.
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Black-collared Hawk
A striking rufous-orange wetland hawk of the Neotropics, immediately recognizable by its pale creamy head and the narrow black band crossing its upper chest.
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African Harrier-Hawk
A distinctive gray African raptor known for its bare, color-changing facial skin and unusually flexible double-jointed legs, used to probe tree holes and nests for prey.
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Osprey
The Osprey is a fish-eating raptor with dark brown upperparts, a white head marked by a bold dark eye-stripe, white underparts, and long, angled wings showing a distinctive dark carpal patch and barred flight feathers.
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Merlin
A small, fast, direct-flying falcon of open northern landscapes, males showing slate-blue upperparts while females and juveniles are brown, both with heavily streaked underparts and no bold facial moustache.
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Prairie Falcon
A pale falcon of arid western North America, best identified in flight by a distinctive dark patch on the underwing near the body, set against otherwise pale sandy-brown plumage.
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American Kestrel
The smallest and most colorful falcon in North America, a common sight perched on roadside wires, told by its rufous back and tail and, in males, contrasting blue-gray wings.
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