All species › Birds of prey › Hawks, eagles and kites › Long-winged Harrier
Long-winged Harrier | Circus buffoni
Buffons kiekendief | Gavilán planeador
The Long-winged Harrier is a large South American harrier that in the Caribbean lives only on Trinidad. With its very long wings and tail it glides low over marshes and rice fields for hours. The species occurs in a light and a dark morph.
Voice
Not very vocal. In flight it sometimes gives a rapid series klee-klee-klee, and at the nest a softer, descending call.
Recording: Marcelo Villegas — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
46–60 cm, the largest harrier in the region, with long, fairly broad wings, a long tail and a white rump. The light morph is blackish brown above, with a white face in which a dark cheek patch and a dark breast band stand out; the underparts are white. In flight the grey flight feathers are barred black below and the tail is grey with dark bands. The dark morph is mostly sooty black, with a narrow white rump and paler barred flight feathers and tail. The female is larger and browner than the male. Immatures are brown, buffish below with dark streaks.
Confusion species
Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus, a vagrant on Trinidad, is smaller and slimmer, with shorter wings. Savanna Hawk Buteogallus meridionalis also quarters open country, but is rufous with broad wings and a short black-and-white banded tail. Snail Kite Rostrhamus sociabilis has a thin, strongly hooked bill and a white tail base with a broad black terminal band.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with reeds and sedges, seasonally flooded savanna, rice fields and open coastal grassland. It hunts in low, slow flight for birds, small mammals, frogs and reptiles. The nest is on the ground or low in dense marsh vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
On Trinidad a scarce resident of the large marshes and rice fields, mainly at Caroni, Oropouche and Nariva. A vagrant on Tobago. Outside the region in northern South America from Colombia and Venezuela to the Guianas and northern Brazil, and again from southern Brazil and Paraguay to Argentina.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best early in the morning or late in the afternoon over the rice fields and marsh edges at Caroni and in the Nariva Swamp. A large, dark harrier with a white rump on Trinidad is almost certainly this species.
Conservation status
Not threatened. On Trinidad the population is small and depends on the remaining marshes, which are threatened by drainage, fire and conversion.
Scientific name
Circus buffoni | (Gmelin, 1788)
Gmelin described the species in 1788 as Falco Buffoni; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Circus was introduced in 1799 by De Lacépède. Circus is from the Ancient Greek kirkos, a bird of prey named for its circling flight. buffoni honours the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788). The specimen the first description was based on came from northeastern Brazil.