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Bicolored Hawk (Accipiter bicolor)
[order] Falconiformes | [family] Accipitridae | [latin] Accipiter bicolor | [UK] Bicolored Hawk | [FR] Épervier bicolore | [DE] Zweifarbensperber | [ES] Azor Bicolor | [IT] Sparviero bicolore | [NL] Roodbroeksperwer | [SU] Aka
Characteristics
- Accipiter bicolor bicolor resides in the Yucatan, south over northern South America, through the Amazon area and, in the tropics and subtropics of the Andes, to eastern Bolivia. The adult has a black crown; its upper parts are deep grey; and its tail black with two or three pale bars that appear white from below. Its primaries are faintly barred with a dusky shade. The underside is highly variable, from pale whitish grey with white under-tail coverts and throat, to dark grey. The thighs are bright rufous. The eyes are orange; the bare skin of the orbit, cere and legs is yellow, and the bill is black. The young are black to deep brown above; the feathers usually having paler edges, and a narrow huff or off-white collar, although this is sometimes indistinct. The tail is black with a white tip and three or four white or grey bars. Below, as the adult, it is variable: white, creamy buff or, occasionally, deep rufous. The thighs are usually more deeply coloured, sometimes mottled with dusky. The eyes are straw coloured, the cere and lores are a paler yellow than those of the adult. The legs are yellow.
- Accipiter bicolor fidens is found in Southern Mexico and is similar to Accipiter bicolor bicolor, but larger.
- Accipiter bicolor pileatus is the variant in Brazil, south of Amazonia. The adult is like a pale Accipiter bicolor bicolor, but is even paler and has a pearl grey collar, and the under-wing coverts as well as the thighs are rufous. Immatures are more mottled with buff and white above than are bicolor, below the colour varies as in bicolor, but it is heavily streaked with broad, black tear-shaped markings.
- Accipiter bicolor guttifer. The tropical area of southern Bolivia, northern Argentina, and the Paraguayan Chaco is home to this group. The under parts are tawny to rufous, mixed with grey in the male and flecked with white in the female. The throat and upper breast are usually grey; above is a little darker. The young much as in pileatus
- Accipiter bicolor chiliensis is to be found in the forested Andes of Chile and Argentina south to Tierra del Fuego and Staten Island. It is darker above than Accipiter bicolor guttifer. Below it is grey or brownish grey, heavily flecked and barred with white. The throat is white, occasionally with a suggestion of the tawny of guttifer. The thighs are rufous as in the other races. The young of this race are very like those of Accipiter bicolor guttifer.
| wingspan min.: | 58 | cm | wingspan max.: | 83 | cm |
| size min.: | 34 | cm | size max.: | 45 | cm |
| incubation min.: | 33 | days | incubation max.: | 35 | days |
| fledging min.: | 30 | days | fledging max.: | 36 | days |
| broods: | 1 | | eggs min.: | 1 | |
| | | | eggs max.: | 3 | |
Click items below to expand
The Bicoloured Hawk can be found in tropical and temperate forested areas in Central and South America from southern Mexico, south through the Andes to Tierra del Fuego and Staten Island and east to Paraguay and northern Argentina. A rare bird in Suriname found in forest edges. No breeding recorded yet. In Chile it is said to prefer woods of oaks and araucarias, but it generally prefers mixed clearings, not unbroken forest. In guatemala Bicolored Hawks are year-round residents and establish nesting territories during the breeding season, which coincides with the late dry season and beginning of the wet season. Nest building and courtship spanned 92 days. Bicolored Hawk nests average 22 m above the ground in living trees 75 cm in diameter. All nests are stick nests, averaging 51 X 44 cm exterior diameter, 26 cm exterior depth, and 3.6 cm interior depth. Clutch size is 1-3 eggs, after clutch loss a second brood is laid. Incubation lasts about 35 days, the young fledge after 30-36 days.
In Chile it builds in mid-October a well constructed nest of green and dry sticks and other material. It is sited high in a tree, not very far from the edge of a forest. Four eggs are laid in late October. They are greyish white, sparingly marked light brown. Incubation is by the female and takes about 20 days. The diet consists principally of birds, especially doves. This species has a large range, with an estimated global extent of occurrence of 14,000,000 km2. It has a large global population estimated to be 100,000-1,000,000 individuals (Ferguson-Lees et al. 2001). Global population trends have not been quantified, but the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e., declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations). For these reasons, the species is evaluated as Least Concern. Very little data available, thought to be sedentary.
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