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Tiny Hawk | Microspizias superciliosus
Amerikaanse dwergsperwer | Gavilán enano
The Tiny Hawk is one of the smallest raptors in the world, about the size of a thrush. It hunts small birds, especially hummingbirds, from a concealed perch in the forest, seizing them in a fast, short flight. In the guide area it is a scarce resident from eastern Honduras to Panama.
Voice
Usually silent. At the nest a high, rapid series of kee-kee-kee notes.
Recording: Felipe Arantes — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–28 cm; the female is distinctly larger than the male. Adults are slate grey above with a darker crown, and white below with dense, fine grey barring; the throat is white. The fairly short tail has three or four dark bands. The eye is red in adults and yellow to orange in young birds; the legs are yellow. Young birds are brown or rufous-brown above with rufous-brown barring below; there is also a rufous morph with more rufous on the underparts.
Confusion species
The Sharp-shinned Hawk Accipiter striatus is larger, with a longer tail and rufous barring or a rufous breast; in the lowlands of Central America it is mainly a winter visitor. The Barred Forest Falcon Micrastur ruficollis has a longer tail, bare yellow skin around the eye and narrow white tail bands. The Double-toothed Kite Harpagus bidentatus is larger and has a dark throat stripe.
Habitat
Humid lowland and foothill forest, also tall secondary forest, forest edges and clearings, and riverside forest. It hunts from a sheltered perch at the edge of a clearing, often near flowering trees or shrubs that attract hummingbirds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Scarce resident in the Caribbean lowlands of eastern Honduras (Gracias a Dios) and Nicaragua, and further in Costa Rica, where it also occurs on the southern Pacific slope, and in Panama on both slopes. Outside the guide area in western Colombia and Ecuador and in Amazonia, the Guianas and eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
It often sits motionless for long periods near flowering plants where hummingbirds feed, such as Heliconia at forest edges in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica and along Pipeline Road in Panama.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In the guide area it is scarce and depends on large, continuous forest.
Scientific name
Microspizias superciliosus | (Linnaeus, 1766) (GBIF: Accipiter superciliosus)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Falco superciliosus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Microspizias was introduced in 2021 by Sangster, Kirwan, Fuchs, Dickinson, Elliott & Gregory. Microspizias is Greek, from mikros 'small' and spizias 'hawk': 'small hawk'. superciliosus is Latin for 'eyebrowed', from supercilium 'eyebrow'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.