White Hawk

How to find it

Scan the sky above the forest as well as the branches, because birders sometimes see it flying very high overhead. At Quebrada Gonzalez in Braulio Carrillo National Park, raptor watchers scan from the parking lot in mid-morning, and two hours of looking for soaring and perched raptors often turns up a White Hawk. A birding guide suggests driving uphill through Cinchona and Varablanca, with middle elevation forest near Cinchona named as a place to look. Because it perches silently for long periods, check quiet branches too. Hilly forest is a better bet than flat ground.

How to recognise it

Start with the colour. This is the only Costa Rican raptor with both a white belly and a white back. Adults are about 58 cm long.

The field marks are plain and few:

- white wings with black edges, so the wingtips look black

- a black band across the tail

- a wide black band near the tail tip

- a pale gray cere

- no black patch on the crown and no black face mask

That last pair matters when you compare it with the Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle. Seen gliding high, the hawk-eagle has darker flight feathers, so the White Hawk is unmistakable if you can see its white upperparts.

What it sounds like

Recording: Alessandro Franchini, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The White Hawk often perches silently for long periods. While perched it preens, sunbathes or waits for prey.

It hunts from a perch, waiting quietly, then glides or drops onto its target, swooping down from above. It hunts both inside the forest canopy and along forest edges, and it is active by day.

Its food includes snakes, lizards, frogs, small mammals and big insects, and it occasionally takes birds. The nest is a small, inconspicuous platform of sticks high in a tree, inside a mass of epiphytes. The hawk lays a single egg and is known for a spectacular aerial courtship display.

Where it lives

The White Hawk lives in humid and very humid forest, below about 1200 m elevation. One Costa Rican source says it reaches about 1400 m at some sites on the Caribbean slope and the south Pacific slope.

It prefers hilly forest on rolling terrain and seems clearly less numerous in flat forest. It lives on the Caribbean slope and the south Pacific coast, mostly south of Carara National Park, and it is absent from the dry lands of the northwest. It is seen only rarely on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula.

Similar birds

The White Hawk can be mistaken for the Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle, especially when perched. The White Hawk has no black patch on the crown and no black face mask, and it shows a wide black band near the tail tip and a pale gray cere. Gliding high, the hawk-eagle has darker flight feathers, a black mask with a yellow eye, a longer tail and thinner wings.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans call it Gavilán Blanco, which simply means White Hawk. One Costa Rican source also lists the shorter form 'gavilán'.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a resident (R), and BirdLife International lists the species as Least Concern.