Common Black Hawk

About the Common Black Hawk

The Common Black Hawk is a broad-winged, short-tailed raptor, coal black as an adult with a single bold white tail band and long yellow legs. Perched, it looks heavyset and small-headed; in flight the wide wings and that white band are diagnostic.

It is a river hawk, tied to permanent water in arid country. It hunts from low perches along the stream, dropping on fish, frogs, snakes, crayfish, and large insects in the shallows, sometimes wading on foot. Pairs build bulky stick nests in tall streamside trees, especially cottonwoods, and reuse them year after year.

In the United States the species barely crosses the border, and Texas hosts only a handful of breeding pairs in spring and summer, mainly along wooded creeks in the Davis Mountains region - one of the rarest nesting raptors in the state.