Raptor on Caribbean Beach, Costa Rica. January. (1 Viewer)

[Mehitabel]

Please could anyone help with an ID of this handsome raptor. Seen on the beach at Tortugero, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, at the end of last month. Mid-afternoon. It was strolling along the sand, vaguely picking at objects, or flying low just ahead of us, from one thicket to the next at the edge of the beach. Strangely unbothered by our presence. Sorry I can't be more precise, but I'd estimate it was about the size of a buzzard.
We've been through all the local candidates we could think of, but none seems quite to fit. Thanks.

 

[KenM]

Looks like a Great black Hawk.

Cheers

 

[Mehitabel]

Looks like a Great black Hawk.

Cheers

Thanks! We were fooled by the lack of blackness... 😫

 

[Mike Earp]

Looks like a Great black Hawk.

Cheers

Or is it an immature Mangrove Black Hawk Buteogallus anthracinus subtilis (the local race of Common Black Hawk)?

 

[Bewick]

Or is it an immature Mangrove Black Hawk Buteogallus anthracinus subtilis (the local race of Common Black Hawk)?

Yes I agree, I believe the great black hawk would have longer legs and a heavier bill.

 

[TicoTyler]

Juvenile Common Black Hawk. If you're in a coastal area it is 99.99% of the time a Common and not a Great Black Hawk.

Side note, I have it on good authority that the Mangrove subspecies is, in the authority's words "utter bullshit". It's one of many sub-species that someone pulled out of nowhere and has no real basis in fact or reality. It's just a Common Black Hawk. But I digress.

 

[Mehitabel]

It's just a Common Black Hawk.

But presumably a juvenile? (We're novice birders and completely new to that region).

 

[ShlundoKyogre]

100% a Common Black Hawk, cool find!

 

[TicoTyler]

But presumably a juvenile? (We're novice birders and completely new to that region).

Yes, see first part of the post.

What I meant about "just a Common Black Hawk" was that someone above referred to it as a Mangrove Black Hawk. Some authorities (Amadon 1982a, American Ornithologists' Union 1983, Sibley and Monroe 1990) have tried to treat the ones living in Mangroves as even a full-fledged species. But I've talked to some taxonomic experts who have told me it doesn't even qualify as a sub-species let alone a full separate species.

Currently, eBird does treat it as a valid sub-species. I'm personally on the fence on it's status but a recent conversation I had with an ornithologist/author was quite convincing that it's not even worth treating as a sub-species.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Or is it an immature Mangrove Black Hawk Buteogallus anthracinus subtilis (the local race of Common Black Hawk)?

IIRC, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, the population of CBH is coastal (?) but nobody splits them afaik. The only sighting we had was over the beach at Uvita.