Buteogallus urubitinga
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% in a week >90%
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 |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a Great Black-Hawk sighting in Main Ridge Forest Reserve on a given day, based on 304 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 32nd most-seen of the 103 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
February
In that month about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Great Black-Hawk in Main Ridge Forest Reserve on a given day, against about 10% in August, the lowest month. That is one of Main Ridge Forest Reserve's driest months, with about 60 mm of rain against 230 mm in October.
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.
2nd of 46
Of the 46 parks where we can rate Great Black-Hawk sightings, Main Ridge Forest Reserve ranks 2nd at about 40%. The best odds are in Parque Estadual Encontro das Águas (Brazil, about 70%). All parks ranked.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Great Black-Hawk is recorded against all the birds logged in Main Ridge Forest Reserve (304 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.
