Crane Hawk, Geranospiza caerulescens

Crane Hawk, Geranospiza caerulescens vivens. Photographs taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, February and March 2018. Photographs and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Crane Hawk, Geranospiza caerulescens vivens, is a one of six subspecies of Crane Hawk, three of which reside in Mexico, and is a member of the Accipitridae Family of Eagles, Hawks and Kites, and the sole global species of the Geranospiza Genus. They are known in Mexico as azor zancón.

The Crane Hawk is large in stature. They have a uniform slate-gray to slate-black plumage with obscure barring on the belly, thighs and crissum, a distinctive white crescent on the undersides of their primaries, and a long, slender, black and white banded, white tipped tail. They have long double-jointed orange-red legs; their iris is crimson, and their cere are lead color. The females are similar in appearance to the males but slightly larger.

The Crane Hawk is found in a wide variety of habitats including lowland semi-deciduous forests to rainforests, mangroves, wooded savannas, or grasslands, often near ponds and marshes from sea-level to elevations up to 750 m (1,600 feet). They are non-migratory with a relatively small home range. They normally do not soar and are usually seen flying low overhead or perched in a tree. They consume arthropods, nestling birds, frogs, fruits, lizards, mollusks, rodents and snakes. The Crane Hawk is poorly studied and very little about their behavioral patterns has been documented.

The Crane Hawk has a limited distribution in Mexico being found in all coastal regions of both the Atlantic and Pacific Slopes. The livens subspecies is limited to northwestern Mexico in Sonora and northern Sinaloa.

From a conservation perspective the Crane Hawk is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely-distributed populations. However, they are generally uncommon and within Mexico their populations are believed to be in decline which has been attributed to deforestation. Their total populations are estimated to be between 500,000 and 5 million individuals.