All species › Birds of prey › Hawks, eagles and kites › Crane Hawk
Crane Hawk | Geranospiza caerulescens
Langpootkiekendief | Gavilán zancón
The Crane Hawk is a slender, slate-grey raptor with a small head and long, orange-red legs. Its intertarsal joint can bend both ways, allowing it to reach deep into tree holes, bromeliads and crevices to pull out frogs, lizards, bats and nestlings. Within the region it occurs only in Trinidad.
Voice
Fairly silent. Mainly near the nest a whistled, descending wheeeuw, sometimes also in flight.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
43–50 cm, with long, broad wings and a long tail. Adults are uniform slate grey, the underparts sometimes with fine pale barring on the belly and thighs. The eye is red, the bill dark. The tail is black with two narrow white bands and a white tip. In flight a white crescent across the primaries shows from below, appearing as a row of pale spots on the spread wing. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are browner, with a pale facial pattern, white streaking on the head and breast, a buffy belly with pale barring and a darker eye.
Confusion species
Plumbeous Kite Ictinia plumbea is also grey with a red eye, but has short legs, long pointed wings that reach beyond the tail at rest and rufous in the primaries. Male Snail Kite Rostrhamus sociabilis is darker, with a strongly hooked bill and a white tail base. Common Black Hawk Buteogallus anthracinus is blacker and bulkier, with short yellow legs and a yellow bill base.
Habitat
Moist lowland forest and forest edge, swamp forest, mangroves and open woodland along streams and ponds; nearly always near water. It hunts by clambering slowly through crowns and along trunks, probing holes and epiphytes with its feet, often with wings spread for balance. Small snakes, insects and other arthropods are also taken.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only in Trinidad, chiefly in the low-lying swamps and forests of the east and south of the island. It is seen only scarcely there, but the number of reports has clearly increased since the start of this century. Not known from Tobago. Outside the region from Mexico through Central America to northern Argentina and Uruguay.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Swamp forest and wooded edges along water in eastern and southern Trinidad. A bird hanging against a trunk or among bromeliads with half-spread wings, probing a cavity with one foot, is almost certainly this species. In flight the white band across the primaries and the long dangling legs are the best features.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a large range, but according to BirdLife is probably declining through forest loss. In Trinidad swamp forest and mangroves are fragmented in many places.
Scientific name
Geranospiza caerulescens | (Vieillot, 1817)
Vieillot described the species in 1817 as Sparvius caerulescens; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Geranospiza was introduced in 1847 by Kaup. Geranospiza is Greek, from geranos 'crane' and spizias 'hawk', after the strikingly long legs. caerulescens is Latin for 'bluish', after the blue-grey plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.