Short-tailed Hawk

About the Short-tailed Hawk

The Short-tailed Hawk is a small, secretive buteo of the American tropics - and one of the least-known raptors north of Mexico. It comes in two color morphs: a crisp light morph, dark-hooded above and snow white below, and an all-chocolate dark morph. Both show a compact shape and relatively short tail that suit the species' unusual hunting style.

That style is the bird's signature: a Short-tailed Hawk hunts from altitude, hanging nearly motionless on high thermals and wind edges - sometimes kiting in place for minutes - then closing its wings and dropping like a stone on small birds below. It eats birds far more than any other Buteo, taking them from treetops and open ground, and spends so much time soaring at the edge of eyesight that it is chronically overlooked.

In the United States the species has long been known from just two outposts: Florida and the mountain borderlands of Arizona, with south Texas seeing occasional wanderers. That is what makes the central Texas story remarkable. Travis County recorded its first documented Short-tailed Hawk, a light morph, in April 2024 - the bird in these photographs. In 2025 that female was joined by a dark-morph male and the pair nested, and in 2026 a female and a juvenile appeared in the same area again, evidence that this tropical raptor may be quietly gaining a foothold in the Hill Country.

Any high, still speck over an Austin-area canyon deserves a second look: a small buteo hanging motionless where the vultures ride, then vanishing in a closed-wing stoop, may be the rarest breeding raptor in central Texas.