Short-tailed Hawk

How to find it

Watch the sky in mid-morning, when it often takes to the air with groups of Black Vultures. Check vulture kettles for a smaller hawk among them. Perched birds are hard to find, because dense canopy often hides them or shows only the head, so flight is your best chance. It often flies very high, so look up and use binoculars or a long lens. A balcony with a view over a forested ridge also works well, as one does on trips toward the Central Valley and Carara.

How to recognise it

Think of a small, compact buteo with fairly long wings and a short tail.

Light adults: dark brown above, white below including the throat, with a barred tail.

Dark morph adults: dark brown overall, with a barred tail.

Dark juveniles: similar, but with mottled chest and underwing feathers.

Despite its name, it often does not look obviously short-tailed. A photo of a perched light morph shows the tail is not especially short, so a perched bird can look different from a soaring one.

What it sounds like

Recording: David Umanzor, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It often soars alone. It hangs in the air (kiting) while searching for birds or small mammals, then dives on prey in a fast stoop. It hunts from soaring flight, often along the edges between wooded and open areas.

In Costa Rica it often rises with Black Vultures, then soars and hovers in plain view before dropping like a rock onto a bird or lizard. Unlike most buteos, it avoids prominent perches, so it is easiest to spot in flight.

Where it lives

Across its range it is common in lowlands and mid elevations, in open and semi-open habitats. In Costa Rica, around Turrialba it is found at lower elevations than the Red-tailed Hawk. It has been reported over the Central Valley, where pairs soar high over green spaces, in the southern Caribbean lowlands, along the drive near Cinchona, and around Carara, where mangroves lie on one side of a road and dry forest on the other.

Similar birds

The Broad-winged Hawk is the species it is most often confused with, because shape and size are alike. Short-tailed has clean white underparts and narrow tail bands, while light Broad-wings have blotchy brown chest barring and wide tail bands. Its wingbeats are smooth and quick, less choppy than the Broad-winged's. With its tail closed, a straight-edged tail and steadier, more direct flight separate it from Double-toothed or Black-type kites.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans know it as Gavilán Colicorto, the name on the official list and in the Costa Rica Tourism Board raptor guide.

Status and conservation

The Costa Rican official list gives it as resident and migrant (R, M), and it is rated Least Concern by the IUCN, though it is uncommon and local across much of its range.

Photography tips

This hawk often flies so high that it shows as a speck among the clouds. Look up and use binoculars or a long lens.