Buteogallus
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Buteogallus Temporal range: Middle Miocene to present |
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| Great black hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Accipitriformes |
| Family: | Accipitridae |
| Genus: |
Buteogallus Lesson, 1830 |
| Species | |
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see text |
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| Synonyms | |
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Alectromorphnus Heine & Reichenow, [1890] |
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see text
Alectromorphnus Heine & Reichenow, [1890]
Heterospizias
Harpyhaliaetus
Wetmoregyps
Buteogallus is a genus of bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. All members of this genus are essentially Neotropical, but the distribution of a single species extends slightly into the extreme southwestern United States. Many of the species are fond of large crustaceans and even patrol long stretches of shore or riverbank on foot where such prey abounds, but some have a rather different lifestyle.
Most of the species have a characteristic tail pattern. This consists of a black base, a wide white middle band, a wide black band, and a quite narrow white band on the feathertips that is often hard to discern or may be lost when the feathers are very worn. Only the white-necked hawk and the rufous crab hawk have a very different tail patterns (see also below).
This genus contains the following species, ordered according to putative relatedness:
The solitary eagles (formerly Harpyhaliaetus) are a more inland relative of the "black" group of Buteogallus – in phenotype they are essentially hefty common black-hawks with lighter body plumage and in one species a small crest. Insofar as there are differences in anatomy, these seem to be related to the different prey they hunt (namely reptiles). Together with the savanna hawk, they seem to be close to some species that were uncomfortably placed in Leucopternis. As that genus was apparently polyphyletic, the present article follows a proposal to unite the solitary eagles as well as the slate-coloured hawk ("Leucopternis" schistaceus) with Buteogallus, to agree with the morphological and mtDNA sequence data., with the addition of the white-necked hawk, "Leucopternis" lacernulatus.
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