Crested Caracara

About the Crested Caracara

A big, long-legged, flat-headed falcon that has decided to make its living as a vulture. The black cap runs down into a shaggy crest it raises when agitated; the face is bare skin that can flush from yellow to hot orange-red; the heavy bill is pale blue-gray. White throat and neck give way to fine black barring across the breast, and in flight the bird shows white patches at the wingtips and a white tail crossed by a broad black band.

Almost nothing about the way it behaves says falcon. Caracaras walk - properly walk, like a crow - across open ground, turning over cow patties and working roadkill. They are usually first to a carcass and will bully vultures off a carcass they did not open themselves. A pair will sit a fence line all morning waiting for something to die or something to move.

Pairs stay together year-round and do not migrate, which is unusual among Texas raptors. They build a bulky, untidy platform of sticks and grass, often low down in a yucca, mesquite, or huisache rather than high in a tree, and both birds share incubation of the two or three heavily blotched eggs. The same pair will often rebuild in the same thicket season after season.

In Texas they are year-round residents through the South Texas brush country and up into the Hill Country, and they have been pushing steadily north for decades. The old name is Mexican eagle, and on a ranch road in Brooks County they can be the most conspicuous raptor of the day.