BRAZILIAN BIRDS OF PREY AND OUR SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISSI

Brazil has around 40 species of eagle, hawk, falcon, kite, caracara and kestrel, some quite common, and they’re not very easy to tell apart.

The crested caracara is common in many areas – it’s 50cm to 60cm long with a 1.2m or 1.3m wingspan. Its broad diet includes fish dying from a lack of oxygen as Pantanal ponds dry up, and animals that have been run over on roads or burnt in forest fires. Also common in Amazonia and the Pantanal are the yellow-headed caracara, about 40cm long, and the black-collared hawk, a reddish-brown fish-catcher, with a white head and chest, that reaches lengths of 45cm. The osprey, or fishing eagle, is bigger (55cm to 60cm; wingspan 1.45m to 1.7m), with a darker brown body.

Brazil’s most emblematic bird of prey (and the largest in the Americas) is the ferocious, rare and enormously powerful harpy eagle, weighing up to 10kg, with a wingspan of up to 2.5m, and claws bigger than human hands. It enjoys a diet of monkeys, sloths, armadillos and other large animals, and nests at least 25m above the ground in big jungle trees. Though a few harpies still inhabit Mata Atlântica, the bird is found chiefly in Amazonia. It’s not yet endangered but will become so if destruction of its rain-forest habitat continues.

BIRDS OF PREY IN BRAZIL

JOIN US ON A TRIP TO THE FALCONS PARK IN THE STATE OF SERGIPE

THIS IS OUR SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISSI

WATCH HIS AMAZING CONSERVATIONIST VIDEO: