More accurately, if you’re seeing the bird in Central Texas, it is no doubt a crested caracara. If you were to see a similar bird in, say, Patagonia, you would probably be looking at a subspecies called the Southern caracara.
The occasional appearance of these birds, usually in pastures, provide an unexpected change of pace from the red-tail hawks, turkey vultures and other ubiquitous big birds of the backroads.
For one thing, the caracara looks a little, well, weird. There’s the crest, which is probably the first thing to catch your eye if you look closely, and then there’s the splash of red on its face that gives it a vaguely festive, tropical air.
If you lined up the caracara alongside a vulture, a red-tailed hawk and a golden eagle and asked the question: “Which one of these does not belong?” most of us would pick the caracara as a vagabond interloper from South America.
Which is not quite true.
The caracara is also commonly known as the Mexican eagle and it may or may not be the national bird of Mexico. The bird depicted on the Mexican flag, the one with one leg on a nopal cactus and the other leg with a rattlesnake in its claws, has been identified alternately as a caracara and a golden eagle.
The Mexican government is of little help here because the country has never officially declared the bird’s identity in the manner that America has identified the bald eagle as a national symbol.
The caracara’s range extends from South America into Central Texas and southern Arizona. There’s an isolated colony in Florida too.
Caracaras are more common in South Texas than they are here but sightings have increased in recent years. There are reportedly a few around the Bell and Falls County line, and they have also been spotted around Salado and in Coryell County. There is the occasional sighting at Fort Hood but sightings on the base are still considered rare.
Mike Scully, writing in the Aug. 2004 issue of the San Antonio Audubon News, called the caracara “among the oddest of raptors.”
That’s a popular perception among casual birders. Carcaras are often referred to as buzzards because they have no problem feeding on carrion. Doesn’t bother them at all. Black vultures and turkey vultures are their brothers in road kill, or any other kind of kill. They are often seen alongside vultures, casting them with guilt by association.
And the common moniker of Mexican eagle is not quite right either. Technically, the caracara is a falcon but, as noted earlier, the bird is a little bit contrary to ordinary. With some species, the early bird might get the worm but the early-rising caracara are first in line for overnight roadkill.
In fact, one of the best times to spot a caracara is early in the morning when they cruise the highways and byways and countryside in hopes of spotting the loser of an auto-critter collision before the buzzards are up and at ‘em.
Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Jim Dillard of Mineral Wells, writing in the Cross Timber News, takes a look at the caracara’s scientific name, Polyborus plancus. He notes that poly means “many,” borus means “gluttonous” and pancus means “flat-footed.”
“We now have a bird that can best be described as a flat-footed falcon with a slight Spanish accent that just thinks it’s an eagle and likes to eat a lot,” Dillard concluded.
Clearly, this is a bird with a strong if somewhat contradictory personality. But it doesn’t really matter what we call it.
For most of us a caracara by any other name is going to be just as weird. And pretty.
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
