Bicolored Hawk

How to find it

Scan low branches and trunks inside the forest for perched birds looking for prey. Small birds calling in alarm may point to a hunting hawk, and patience is advised. A Costa Rica guide notes that in light rain raptors sometimes perch more in the open, and he has seen this hawk do so more than once. Watch fruiting trees full of birds, because the hawk may dash in after them. A pigeon that flies in and bolts can also show where the hawk sits.

How to recognise it

Adults are grey above, with a darker crown and wings and a banded tail. The thighs are always rusty orange, so look for them first. Underparts range from dark to pale grey. The underwing coverts are white in northern birds, which includes Costa Rica.

It is 34 to 45 cm long and among the largest forest hawks of Central and South America. The female is much bigger than the male. A Turrialba guide puts it at about Roadside Hawk size, with pure white underparts and rufous thighs.

Juveniles vary a lot. Below they can be white, buff or rusty, sometimes with dark streaks, and their upperparts are browner than the adult's. The cere, the skin at the bill base, is yellow.

What it sounds like

Recording: Gabriel Reinoso Franchino, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This hawk is shy and hard to detect, so it may be commoner than it seems. It waits quietly in dense cover for prey, then dashes out. In the canopy it may fly fast between perches and chase any bird it flushes. It sometimes hunts in pairs. Near its nest it chases away larger hawks. At Poás one was watched feeding on a dead pigeon, checking its surroundings and eating more as dusk came on.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives in humid forest areas on both slopes, from sea level to about 1,800 m. It is absent from the dry forest of the northwest Pacific. Across its range it uses forest, woodland, second growth, plantations and wooded savanna, and it does not occur above about 2,700 m. It is most abundant in undisturbed primary or riverside forest, yet it also turns up at forest edges and open farmland in the Central Valley highlands.

When to see it

Breeding is reported from the end of the dry season into the start of the rainy season, and birds are likely to be noisier then.

Similar birds

Young birds can be mistaken for the pale form of the Collared Forest-Falcon. The hawk's cere is yellow and it lacks yellow skin around the eye. Some juveniles resemble Barred or Slaty-backed Forest-Falcons, but the hawk has different bare-part colours, shorter legs and a less stepped tail. One Costa Rican page notes the juvenile has a yellow eye, while forest-falcons have brown eyes. Gray-bellied Hawk is larger with darker grey underparts, and Sharp-shinned Hawk is smaller and more slender.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call this hawk Camaleón (chameleon) as well as Gavilán Bicolor. The English and Spanish names both refer to the two grey tones of the adult.

Status and conservation

It is a resident (R) on the AOCR list, rare to uncommon in Costa Rica, and rated Least Concern by the IUCN.