Yellow-headed Caracara: Encyclopedia - Yellow-headed Caracara

Yellow-headed Caracara

The Yellow-headed Caracara, Milvago chimachima, is a bird of prey in the family Falconidae. Unlike the Falco falcons in the same family, the caracaras are not fast-flying aerial hunters, but are rather sluggish and often scavengers.

The Yellow-headed Caracara is a resident breeding bird from Panama, Trinidad and Tobago south through South America to northern Argentina.

This is a bird of savannah, swamps and forest edges, which lays one or two brown-marked buff eggs in a stick nest in a tree.

The Yellow-headed Caracara is 41-46 cm long and weighs 325g. It is broad-winged and long-tailed. The adult has a buff head, with a black streak behind the eye, and buff underparts. The upperparts are brown with distinctive pale patches on the flight feathers of the wings, and the tail is barred cream and brown.

The sexes are similar, but immature birds are mottled with brown below. The voice of this species is a characteristic screamed schreee.

The Yellow-headed Caracara is omnivorous, and will eat reptiles, amphibians and other small animals as well as carrion. It will also take ticks from cattle, and is locally called “tickbird”.

The Yellow-headed Caracara has benefited from forest clearing for cattle ranching. Its status in Trinidad has changed from rare to fairly common, and it was first seen on Tobago in 1987.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Yellow-headed Caracara", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki