Howdy, folks.  This week features another suggestion from Pa Killsock, the very literally named black-and-white hawk-eagle.  This small eagle lives in large portions of north, central and south America, beginning in southern Mexico and continuing south in patches through much of Venezuela, Colombia, “the Guianas,” Suriname and large parts of Brazil.  In the west its range extends through bits of Ecuador, large parts of Peru, and a big chunk of Bolivia.  Finally, it looks like a bit of its range extends from the Atlantic coast of Brazil into Paraguay.  Despite this seemingly cosmopolitan range, the bird prefers to stay out of dense and humid forests and doesn’t like open, semiarid grasslands either.  It prefers mixed forest and shrubland, and requires large stands of dense, closed-canopy forest in order to effectively hunt.  Just not too damp, please.  It also doesn’t appear to prefer to live at very high altitudes, a single individual was seen at an altitude of around 1,200m or 4,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in Colombia.

The black-and-white hawk-eagle likes to hunt by soaring through the air until it finds its prey and diving at it from an angle, sometimes straight into the forest canopy.  If perched while looking for prey, it moves to a new location at short intervals.  It prefers to hunt ridges and forest edges, where surface dwelling prey is more accessible.  The hawk-eagle is a carnivore, eating mammals, toads, and the word of the week, “squamates,” which is the name of the largest order of reptiles.  Basically, if it has scales and can’t regulate its internal temperature, the hawk-eagle will give it a nosh.  It also eats a large variety of birds, including our fluffy little friends the tanagers and cotingas, which it catches on the wing.  It has been seen attacking monkeys, although I found conflicting reports on whether it was seen eating them.

The birds build a large, cup-shaped nest of sticks high in exposed trees next to ridges or other places with equally good visibility for spotting prey.  Detailed information on their nesting and breeding habits is scarce, with researchers studying a total of three nests in the last 20 years.  As best as we can tell it lays one or two eggs at a time, but nothing is known about how long it takes the chicks to fledge or how the parents divide up the labor of caring for chicks. The birds are not sexually dimorphic, although females are larger than males.  

The black-and-white hawk-eagle appears to require a hunting territory of around 1,400 hectares or around 5.5 square miles at least.  It lives in a variety of habitats, but is also vulnerable to habitat fragmentation, although one must assume this is theoretical for lack of hard data. It is found throughout its range, but scientists aren’t sure if its numbers are falling. Until 2000 the IUCN classified it as “near threatened,” but lacking evidence of population decline, it has been downgraded to “least concern.”  

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