Short-tailed Hawk

About the Short-tailed Hawk

A small, secretive buteo of the American tropics that reaches the United States mainly in Florida and far south Texas, occurring in two color morphs - a white-bellied light morph and an all-dark morph. It hunts unlike most buteos, hanging motionless on high thermals and stooping on small birds below. Short-tailed Hawks are a genuine central Texas rarity: Travis County recorded its first documented bird, a light morph, in April 2024 - the individual in these photos. The following year that light-morph female was joined by a dark-morph male and the pair nested, and in 2026 a female and a juvenile were seen again in the same area, hinting that this tropical raptor may be quietly establishing itself in the Hill Country.