Cuban Black-Hawk

The Cuban Black Hawk is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes the eagles, hawks and Old World vultures.

The Cuban Black-Hawk is classified as Near Threatened (NT), is close to qualifying for or is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future.

2007, Cuban Black-Hawk, formerly a subspecies of Common Black-Hawk, was split as a separate species based on difference in size, voice, plumage coloration and pattern. Cuban Black-Hawk is a mangrove specialist and endemic to coastal Cuba, the Isle of Pines, and several of the larger cays in the Cuban Archipelago (Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba, Garrido and Kirkconnell). While Common Black-Hawk is a slate-gray to blackish bird, Cuban Black-Hawk is chocolate brown. More

Cuban Black-Hawk consists of 3-4 notes which differs from Common Black-Hawk's 9-24 note call (Taxonomic status and biology of the Cuban Black-Hawk Buteogallus anthracinus gundlachii, Wiley and Garrido in J. Raptor Res. 39(4):351-364. The question still remaining is the origin of this bird and will it be added to the ABA Checklist. Since Cuba is part of the A.O.U. area, Cuban Black-Hawk is already on the A.O.U. Check-list. More

said to do, the scientific report on the Cuban Black-Hawk that was mentioned in earlier posts makes a point about how little is known about the Cuban Black-Hawk in various matters. It was in the December 2005 issue of The Journal of Raptor Research and the title is "Taxonomic Status and Biology of the Cuban Black-Hawk, Buteogallus anthracinus gundlachii (Aves: Accipitridae)". The authors state: "The lack of natural history information is not unique to gundlachii, but is also true for other forms of the genus Buteogallus... More

Common Black-Hawk? Cuban Black-Hawk? Great Black-Hawk? During the 1970's and 80's, with several possible black-hawk species to choose from, identification of sighted birds as to species was a muddy affair. Two photographs were taken of black-hawks in early 1978 and late 1979 but one bird was misidentified (Stevenson and Anderson 1994). John Ogden's summer 1975 seasonal report for the Florida region (American Birds 1975) included a note regarding the hawks seen in South Florida for the past three years. More

* Cuban Black-hawk, Buteogallus gundlachii – formerly included in B. anthracinus * Great Black-hawk, Buteogallus urubitinga * Savanna Hawk, Buteogallus meridionalis Mangrove Black Hawk, Buteogallus anthracinus subtilisHowever, delimited so strictly the genus is probably paraphyletic (= some, but not all, of the descendants from a common ancestor). More

An potential first record for the US, a Cuban Black-Hawk was found and photographed at the Discovery Center at Callaway Gardens Resort, Pine Mountain, GA, on 10 April 2009. Callaway Gardens biologist Cory Croft, through RBA compiler Jeff Sewell, alerted the general Georgia birding population to its presence, but this apparent one day wonder was not relocated the following day. Other birders were able to photograph the bird while it was still foraging around the bird feeders at the Discovery Center. More

So far as the Cuban Black-Hawk & human interaction goes, an interesting part of the report says "Black-hawks...were remarkably non-aggressive toward humans at their nests and allowed us to approach much closer than other local raptor species tolerated..." This bird was obviously not at its nest, but that sentence seems to indicate that the species has some level of tolerance of any humans it might encounter. So I hope this information has been helpful in some way. More