Short-tailed Hawk, a Florida specialty

Short-tailed Hawk, another sought-after Florida speciality for birders and not easy to see. This bird breeds primarily in southern and central Florida and a little in southern AZ and south TX. We have one on our property list here on Sanibel, FL, lucky us.

The Short-tailed Hawk comes in two morphs, a light morph, shown here, and a dark morph. Dark-morphs are dark below with blackish brown body and wing coverts, paler flight feathers and tail, and dark trailing edge to wings. Short-tailed Hawks mostly soar and may hang in one spot for a time. We almost always see them in flight when we encounter them.