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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Short-tailed Hawk, a Florida specialty



Short-tailed Hawk, another sought-after Florida speciality for birders and not easy to see. This bird breeds primarily in southern and central Florida and a little in southern AZ and south TX. We have one on our property list here on Sanibel, FL, lucky us.

The Short-tailed Hawk comes in two morphs, a light morph, shown here, and a dark morph. Dark-morphs are dark below with blackish brown body and wing coverts, paler flight feathers and tail, and dark trailing edge to wings. Short-tailed Hawks mostly soar and may hang in one spot for a time. We almost always see them in flight when we encounter them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hello Phoebe & Abby, I am glad you saw my friends on the beach - they said you were really cute!!! I hope
you are having fun!!! Love, Polo

Lillian Stokes said...

Thanks Polo. That was quite a coincidence meeting your friends! they were nice and I especially liked that they admired me.
slurps from your sister Phoebe
And woof from Abby

Anonymous said...

I saw a pair of Short-tailed hawks on a recent visit to St.Petersburg. They were chasing each other and catching insects around the lights at Derby Lane Racetrack at dusk one night. They looked just like the ones in the photo. Dark with light/white underside and the "face mask" near the head. They were funny, loud, and engaging.