Galapagos Hawk

Galapagos Hawk (Buteo galapagoensis )

The Galapagos Hawk (Buteo galapagoensis ) is a bird of prey from the kind of buzzards. It is endemic to the Galapagos Islands. Its population is estimated to be at risk.

Area of ​​distribution and habitat

As the name implies, it is native only to the Galapagos Islands. Its habitats ranging from tropical forests to steppes and mountain ranges. ( 1)

Properties

The Galapagos Hawk is up to 56 cm long and reaches a weight of 650-850 g The plumage is both males and females alike. Its plumage is dark brown and striped tail gray. The female is much larger than the male. ( 2)

Reproduction

The buzzards nest in trees and use the same nest often several times. For each brood the nest is enlarged so that it can become very large over the years (3). Both the males and the females operate brood care.

The female mates with an average of two ( one to eight ) male buzzards. There are totally monogamous populations, but also populations where all females have several males. The males are usually not closely related to each other and all participate in brood care. From which the male buzzards finally descended the young animal, seems to be random. When several young animals are present, they usually come from different fathers. (5, 6)

Both males and females incubate the eggs up to three. After hatching, first only hunts the male while the female stays with the boys and feed them with the prey, feed later and hunt both parents. Most still only one young is fledged with two months. The boy stays up to four months with his parents until it is driven out of them. (2)

Hunting behavior

The Galapagos Hawk hunts primarily from the air. It eats small mammals, reptiles, insects and other arthropods and even small birds, stranded dead fish and other carrion. (1, 2, 3, 8 )

Trustingness

How island animals that have no natural predators, the Galapagos Hawk has lost his instinct to flee. That Galapagos hawks are not just tame, you can tell when they are threatened, even if the mostly poor locals buzzards hunt their chicks, beaten with a stick, the animals are not shy as a normal wild animal that would have to be, in our view but even then not fly it if they have already been hit by the stick. Thus, they differ significantly, for example, of our domestic dogs, which can run wild correctly. Because of the lack of flight instinct he is in great danger to inhabited islands of people. (1 S.425ff, p.46 )

Origin

Studies of mitochondrial DNA of the Galapagos buzzard and his next of kin, the prairie buzzard (Buteo swainsoni ) show that the ancestors of the Galapagos buzzards have colonized the islands about 300 000 years ago. This makes them the most recent immigrants to the islands, compared with the Darwin finches whose ancestors about 2-3 million years ago came to the islands. (3, 4) However, there are indications that the Galapagos buzzards are in several ways at the beginning of splitting (7).