Buteogallus urubitinga
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5% in a week ~10%
The great black hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga) is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes the eagles, hawks, and Old World vultures. The great black hawk was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the eagles, hawks and relatives in the genus Falco and coined the binomial name Falco urubitinga. Gmelin's description was ultimately based on the "urubitinga" that had been described in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in his Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. The great black hawk is now one of nine species placed in the genus Buteogallus was introduced in 1830 by the French naturalist René Lesson. The name genus is a portmanteau of Buteo, a genus introduced in 1779 by Bernard Germain de Lacépède for the buzzards and the genus Gallus introduced in 1760 by Mathurin Jacques Brisson for the junglefowl. The specific epithet urubitinga is from Tupi Urubú tinga meaning "big black bird" for such a raptor.
Two subspecies are recognised: Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goiânia | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 2 | Asuncion | 🇵🇾 Paraguay | |
| 3 | João Pessoa | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 4 | Campo Grande | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 5 | Panama City | 🇵🇦 Panama | |
| 6 | Porto Alegre | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 7 | Santos | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 8 | Belo Horizonte | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 9 | Caracas | 🇻🇪 Venezuela |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | São Paulo Zoo | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 2 | Parque Municipal Summit | 🇵🇦 Panama | |
| 3 | Aviario Nacional de Colombia | 🇨🇴 Colombia | |
| 4 | Zoológico do CIGS | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 5 | Refugio Silvestre Yanacocha | 🇪🇨 Ecuador | |
| 6 | Yanacocha Animal Rescue Centre | 🇪🇨 Ecuador | |
| 7 | El Nispero Zoo | 🇵🇦 Panama | |
| 8 | Parque dos Falcões | 🇧🇷 Brazil | |
| 9 | Zoológico de Canindé | 🇧🇷 Brazil |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Great Black-Hawk sighting in Iguazú National Park on a given day, based on 56 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 253rd most-seen of the 343 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, and over a week to about 10%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Any time of year
In every month with enough records, under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Great Black-Hawk in Iguazú National Park on a given day, so our monthly data shows no clear season.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Great Black-Hawk sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
34th of 46
Of the 46 parks where we can rate Great Black-Hawk sightings, Iguazú National Park ranks 34th at under 5%. The best odds are in Parque Estadual Encontro das Águas (Brazil, about 70%), Main Ridge Forest Reserve (Trinidad and Tobago, about 40%) and El Impenetrable National Park (Argentina, about 30%). All parks ranked.
Same family: Accipitridae
The closest relatives of the Great Black-Hawk that you can see in Iguazú National Park (family Accipitridae, Hawks, Eagles, and Kites) are Roadside Hawk (about 30%), Plumbeous Kite (about 20%) and Snail Kite (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Great Black-Hawk is recorded against all the birds logged in Iguazú National Park (56 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
