Feather & Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify feathers by species — with feather type, plumage, colours, size, habitat, and how to tell them apart in the field.
Cooper's Hawk
Cooper's Hawk is a woodland accipiter with short rounded wings and a long, broadly banded tail, adult plumage showing blue-grey upperparts and fine rufous barring below, well suited to fast pursuit through trees.
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Sharp-shinned Hawk
The Sharp-shinned Hawk is North America's smallest accipiter, with short rounded wings, a long square-tipped banded tail, and adult plumage of slate-grey upperparts with fine rufous barring below, built for darting through dense cover.
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American Kestrel
The smallest and most colorful falcon in North America, a common sight perched on roadside wires, told by its rufous back and tail and, in males, contrasting blue-gray wings.
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Merlin
A small, fast, direct-flying falcon of open northern landscapes, males showing slate-blue upperparts while females and juveniles are brown, both with heavily streaked underparts and no bold facial moustache.
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Shikra
A small, agile hawk of Africa and Asia resembling a miniature goshawk, identified by blue-gray upperparts and finely rufous-barred underparts.
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Brown Hawk-Owl
The Brown Hawk-Owl is a widespread Asian owl with a hawk-like, tuftless head, dark brown upperparts, and rufous-streaked white underparts.
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Swainson's Hawk
Swainson's Hawk is a long-winged buteo of open grassland and prairie, typically showing a dark breast bib, paler belly, and notably dark flight feathers contrasting against paler underwing coverts, distinct from the broader-winged buteos it shares range with.
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Zone-tailed Hawk
A blackish hawk that closely mimics the flight silhouette and dark coloring of the Turkey Vulture, distinguished mainly by its banded tail feathers.
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Harris's Hawk
A dark chestnut-brown desert hawk notable for its social, cooperative hunting behavior, with a bold black-and-white tail pattern and chestnut shoulder patches.
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Rough-legged Hawk
The Rough-legged Hawk is an Arctic-breeding buteo with a pale tail base and dark terminal band, a dark belly patch, and dark carpal patches on the underwing, plus legs feathered fully to the toes for insulation.
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Powerful Owl
Australia's largest owl, a powerful hawk-owl of eucalypt forest that preys on tree-dwelling mammals, its underparts marked with bold dark chevrons rather than simple streaks or bars.
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Common Black Hawk
A stocky, broad-winged hawk of wooded streams and mangroves, easily told from other dark raptors by its nearly all-black plumage crossed by a single wide white tail band.
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Long-legged Buzzard
A pale, long-winged buzzard of arid steppe and semi-desert across Eurasia and North Africa, told from similar hawks by its usually unbarred rufous tail and bold dark carpal patches.
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Red-tailed Hawk
The Red-tailed Hawk is a widespread North American buteo best known for its brick-red adult tail, pale underparts with a dark belly band, and broad, rounded wings often seen soaring over open country and roadsides.
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