Peru: Caracaras

Now that the falcons and their friends have their very own order, the caracaras, odd birds of prey to start with, seem even odder. These tropical scavengers are delightfully diverse in Peru, where we ended up seeing four species on my September trip with Kolibri: Southern Crested, Mountain, Red-throated, and Black Caracaras adorned habitats from the jungles to the puna, each species as striking as the next.

The first of our carrion falcons were high up in the Andes, spectacularly marked Mountain Caracaras stalking the tundra-like flats among Andean Geese and llamas.

Their terrestrial habits, stark patterns, and bright soft parts always remind me of lapwings–and indeed, Andean Lapwing sometimes shares these high-elevation pastures with these crazy birds.

At the opposite habitat extreme, Red-throated Caracaras were very common and–at least vocally–conspicuous in the jungles of Amazonia, where their social habits and raucous croakings make them obvious replacements for the crows so sadly lacking in southern forests.

While the red-throats accompanied us through the jungles, Black Caracaras were a frequent roadside sight in more open areas. I grew especially fond of the weird-faced juveniles, with their vulture-like stare and boldly barred undertails.

Southern Crested–a close look-alike of its Northern Crested cousins in Mexico and the southern US–did not deign to sit for a portrait; in fact, this was the scarcest of the caracaras wherever we went, with fewer than ten individuals seen on our entire tour.

I’ve now been fortunate enough to see more than half of the world’s caracara species, and I’m looking forward to the rest. But one of this strange group is beyond reach: Mexico’s Guadalupe Caracara was last seen–over the barrel of a shotgun, in fact–more than a hundred years ago, and is among the creatures that are definitely, definitively extinct. Hard to imagine given how successful so many of its fellow caracaras are, but that’s what comes of living on an island, I suppose. Happily, Peru’s caracaras seem to be doing all right.