Roadside Hawk

About the Roadside Hawk

The Roadside Hawk is exactly what its name promises through most of Latin America - the small, scrappy buteo on the wire or fence post along nearly every tropical road from Mexico to Argentina. Gray-brown above with a finely barred rusty belly, pale eyes, and yellow legs, it is one of the smallest buteos, closer to a big kite in build, with relatively short wings and a longish banded tail.

It is a sit-and-wait generalist, dropping from low perches onto large insects, lizards, small mammals, and the occasional bird, and it is famously bold around clearings, towns, and burns, where fleeing prey makes for easy hunting. The flight style is distinctive - quick, stiff wingbeats and a flat glide - and its complaining, drawn-out scream is a constant tropical soundtrack.

For a bird so abundant just south of the border, the Roadside Hawk barely crosses it: the United States sees only rare visitors to the Rio Grande Valley, almost all in winter, and every accepted record draws birders from across the country. The species' habit of perching low and openly at least makes a visiting bird findable once word gets out.

Any small, long-tailed, pale-eyed buteo hunting from a low perch in deep south Texas deserves careful study - most turn out to be Gray Hawks or young Broad-wingeds, which is exactly why a genuine Roadside Hawk is such an event.