Return of Bird of the Week: Black-collared Hawk

It’s a gorgeous bird, bright cinnamon with thin black lines, a white head and the black bib that gives the species its common name. It’s unmistakeable in the field. And while it is an Accipter – like a Sharp-shinned or Cooper’s Hawk in North America – it’s evolved into a different ecological niche entirely. This is the Neotropics’ analogue to an Osprey, a species that primarily hunts and feeds on fish. It’s widely distributed, from Mexico to Argentina. As you’d expect from its diet, it is most frequently found along waterways, but rarely at high densities. It’s monotypic – the…