Laughing Falcon

How to find it

Listen for the call first. If the bird is close, you may then find it on a high, open branch. Scan the upper branches of trees along pastures and forest edges, since the falcon often sits high and watches the ground for food. Dawn and dusk are the times to try, and the open habitat can make it tricky to spot. The call is heard most often at dusk. On a drive toward Sarapiqui it is one of the possible rainforest raptors, along with Crested Caracara, Gray Hawk and Roadside Hawk.

How to recognise it

This is a medium-sized falcon, about 53 cm long, with a stocky body, a big head, short rounded wings and a long rounded tail.

Look for these marks:

A pale cream head and underparts on adults.

A broad black mask across the eyes that wraps around the neck as a narrow collar.

A small bushy crest on the crown.

Dark brown to blackish back and wings.

A dark tail with pale bands.

A black bill with a yellow base, and yellowish legs.

Males and females look alike. Young birds have a richer buff head and underparts, a scaled-looking back and narrower pale tail bands.

What it sounds like

Recording: Dan MacNeal, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The Laughing Falcon is usually solitary. It perches for a long time on high, exposed branches with a good view of its surroundings, often in plain view on one branch for hours, upright and alert. It may flick its tail, nod, or shuffle along the perch with slow steps.

It flies slowly with short, shallow wingbeats and glides gently. After a long watch it drops suddenly and grips prey with strong feet. Snakes make up most of its diet, and it also eats rodents and lizards. Two birds sometimes duet.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it occurs locally up to about 1,850 m and rarely climbs higher. Elsewhere in Central America it usually stops near 1,500 m. It is fairly common in the lowlands of both the Pacific and Caribbean slopes.

It likes forest edges, broken or fragmented forest, semi-open country, second growth and lone savanna trees, including the edges of dry and evergreen forest. It tends to avoid mature forest and often sits in the few trees left in pastures.

When to see it

Dawn and dusk are suggested as the best times to look. Around Turrialba a local birder says it is very active in the early morning and around dusk, and stays active well into the evening. Eggs are laid early in the dry season, in February and March, in Guatemala and Costa Rica.

Similar birds

Collared Forest-Falcon's call is sometimes likened to the Laughing Falcon's, but the Laughing Falcon's call is much faster and has a gwa sound. When a second Laughing Falcon joins in, it turns into a cackle. Costa Rican forest-falcons stay in dense cover and call from hiding, while the Laughing Falcon calls loudly out in the open, so it is the far easier one to see.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call it guaco, and also halcón guaco or halcón reidor. Other local names listed for it include halcón risueño, valdivia and guaicurú. Village people use the name Guaco because it echoes the bird's eerie, obsessive call, and the naturalist Skutch wrote about it in a chapter called the snake hunter.

Folk belief holds that a guaco bitten by a venomous snake eats the guaco vine (bejuco de guaco) to avoid dying. One account says the Huetar people saw it as a protector against venomous snakes, because it visited caves hunting them, and saw its call as a sign of new life or a death. A popular legend says that when the guaco sings, someone will die, though a Costa Rican guide's post calls this only a myth.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a resident (R), and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern, with a very large range.

Photography tips

Perched birds can be far off and poorly lit: one photographer in La Fortuna noted the bird was a little distant and in shade. Another shot a roadside perched bird near San Miguel at 10:34 am with a fast shutter, 1/1600 s, and plus 2/3 exposure compensation.