Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE FALCON-LIKE BIRDS

THE FALCONS, GOSHAWKS, CARACARAS, AND ALLIES

Chimango Hawk

Passing over the genus, Phalcobanus, with its four or five species, we may mention briefly the Chimango Hawk (Milvago chimango) as typical of another genus. This species, which inhabits the southern half of South America, is about fifteen inches long, buffy brown above and gray below, lighter on the rump and tail, and more or less barred or freckled with brownish gray.

The legs are slender, the claws weak, and the bill only very slightly hooked.”It has,”says Hudson,”an easy loitering flight, and when on the wing does not appear to have any object in view, like the Hawk, but wanders and prowls about here and there, and when it spies another bird it flies after him to see if he has food in his eye.”

They appear to be a strange conglomeration, presenting successively the life habits of a dozen species.”On the same day you will see one bird in violent Hawk-like pursuit of its living prey, with all the instincts of rapine hot within it, and another less ambitious individual engaged in laboriously tearing at an old cast-off shoe, uttering mournful notes the while.

They are loquacious and sociable, frequently congregating in loose companies of thirty or forty individuals, when they spend several hours every day in spirited exercises, soaring about like Martins, performing endless evolutions, and joining in aerial mock battles.

When tired of these pastimes they all settle down again, to remain for an hour or so perched on the topmost boughs of trees or other elevations; and at intervals one bird utters a very long leisurely chant, with a falling inflection, followed by a series of short notes, all the other birds joining in the chorus and uttering short notes in time with those of their soloist or precentor."

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