• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Black Falcon - BirdForum Opus

Photo by Hans&Judy Beste
Cunnamulla, Western Queensland, October 2008
Falco subniger

Identification

Photo by stoop
South-east Queensland, 1999

Male 45 cm (17¾ in), female 56 cm (22 in)

Similar Species

Black Falcon does not show banding in tail or wings, and does not show moustachial stripes in the head (these are all differences from Brown Falcon). Older birds can have some white in the head, but are otherwise black to dark brown.

Distribution

Australia: occurs in the interior of all mainland states, absent from coastal areas of the west, north and east and from Tasmania. Uncommon over most of range.

Resident and nomadic.

Taxonomy

This is a monotypic species[1].

Habitat

Open woodland and forest edge, plains, grasslands and farmland with scattered trees.

Behaviour

Diet

Their diet consists of mammals, such as rabbits and rats, large insects, rarely going for reptiles. They also take birds.

Breeding

They utilise large stick nests previously used by other raptors.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2017. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2017, with updates to August 2017. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved Apr 2018)
  3. Wikipedia

Recommended Citation

External Links

Use Falco subniger to

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.

Use Black Falcon to

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.

Back
Top