🪶 Raptor Biology & Terms · 6 min
What counts as a raptor
Why this matters
The exam opens here, and so does every conversation you will have with a game warden. Falconry law is written around a specific set of birds, and the groupings below are how both the biologists and the regulations carve them up.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Name the two orders the term raptor covers
- Place Accipiter, Buteo, Parabuteo and Falco in the falconer's short-wing / broad-wing / long-wing scheme
- State the single factor that should decide which raptor you fly
"Raptor" covers all hawks and owls. In the taxonomy the manual uses, that means two orders: Falconiformes (the diurnal birds of prey) and Strigiformes (the owls). Accipitridae is a family inside Falconiformes, the largest family of hawks and eagles, and the exam has a question built specifically on the difference between a family and an order.
The falconer's three groups
| Falconer's term | Genus | Typical birds |
|---|---|---|
| Short wings | Accipiter | Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk |
| Broad wings | Buteo, Parabuteo | Red-tailed Hawk, Harris's Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk |
| Long wings | Falco | Peregrine, Gyrfalcon, Merlin, American Kestrel |
These are working categories, not scientific ones, and they describe wing shape and flight style rather than ancestry. An austringer flies short wings. A falconer, strictly speaking, flies long wings, though in ordinary use the word covers everyone.
The one question that decides your bird
Of everything you might weigh when choosing a species, the manual puts one factor first: the availability of prey suitable for that raptor. Not your housing, not what your friends fly, not what you find beautiful. A peregrine with no open ground and no ducks is a caged bird. A red-tail with a rabbit field behind the house is a falconry bird.
Senses
Hawks and falcons hunt by sight and hearing. Their sense of smell is not well developed, which is why scent-based tricks that work on mammals do nothing here, and why a bird will walk past food it cannot see.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.