Photos by Cory Croft

Photos by Tim Banks

Photos by Kelly Flores

An potential first record for the US, a Cuban Black-Hawk was found and photographed at the Discovery Center at Callaway Gardens Resort, Pine Mountain, GA, on 10 April 2009.

Callaway Gardens biologist Cory Croft, through RBA compiler Jeff Sewell, alerted the general Georgia birding population to its presence, but this apparent one day wonder was not relocated the following day.

Other birders were able to photograph the bird while it was still foraging around the bird feeders at the Discovery Center. The bird was originally thought to be a Common Black-Hawk (B. anthracinus), but a photo by Kelly Floress revealed a key plumage detail, the relatively unmarked large white patch at the base of the underside of the primaries, that probably identify this particular individual as a Cuban Black-Hawk, an endemic and mostly sedentary denizen of mangroves and coastal swamps of Cuba and the Isle of Youth. Other photos show plumage details such as the brownish tones to the mantle & wings and the overall scaly appearance that are particular to this former subspecies of Common Black-Hawk. (Cuban Black-Hawk was returned to full species level in 2007 by the AOU: http://www.aou.org/checklist/suppl/AOU_checklist_suppl_48.pdf).

There are records for Common Black-Hawk (as well as possibly what would have been the Cuban subspecies at the time and their congener, Great Black-Hawk, B. urubitinga), mostly from southeast Florida and the Keys during the 1970's through the 2000's, but the origin of these birds is uncertain and as of 2009 neither of these three species appear on the official Florida Checklist. Both The Birdlife of Florida (Stevenson and Anderson, 1994) and Florida Bird Species: An Annotated Checklist (Robertson and Woolfenden, 1992) summarize the dilemma of the Florida sightings and specimens.

How this bird arrived at Callaway Gardens will be subject to debate, but it is an exciting discovery nonetheless.

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