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Summary

The roadside hawk (Rupornis magnirostris) is a relatively small bird of prey found in the Americas. This vocal species is often the most common raptor in its range. It has many subspecies and is now usually placed in the monotypic genus Rupornis instead of Buteo.

Taxonomy

The roadside hawk was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the eagles, hawks and relatives in the genus Falco and coined the binomial name Falco magnirostris. Gmelin based his description on the "Épervier à gros bec de Cayenne" that had been described and illustrated in 1770 by the French polymath Comte de Buffon in his multi-volume Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The roadside hawk is now the only species placed in the genus Rupornis that was introduced in 1844 by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek rhupos meaning "dirt" or "filth" with ornis meaning "bird". The specific epithet magnirostris combines the Latin magnus meaning "great" with -rostris meaning "billed".

Twelve subspecies are recognised. Their distributions are as follow:

R. m. griseocauda (Ridgway, 1874) – Mexico (south from Colima, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, except Yucatán and Tabasco) south to northwest Costa Rica and western Panama R. m. conspectus Peters, 1913 – southeast Mexico (Tabasco and Yucatán Peninsula) and north Belize R. m. gracilis Ridgway, 1885 – Cozumel and Isla Holbox, near Yucatán (Mexico) R. m. sinushonduri (Bond, 1936) – Guanaja and Roatán, off Honduras R. m. petulans (van Rossem, 1935) – southwest Costa Rica and Pacific slope of west Panama to Tuira River, and adjacent islands R. m. alius Peters & Griscom, 1929 – San José and San Miguel, in Pearl Islands (Gulf of Panama) R. m. magnirostris (Gmelin, 1788) nominate – Colombia south to west Ecuador, east to Venezuela and the Guianas, and south to Amazonian...