The Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle is a large species of raptor found in tropical forests in parts of Central and South America.
Black-and-white Hawk-Eagles feed on a variety of prey items, including mammals, like monkeys, reptiles, and other birds. Usually prey is found while the bird is soaring at high altitude.
Black-and-white Hawk-Eagles can be recognized by their namesake plumage -- they are mostly white with black on the back, wings, and around the eye. The tail has black and grey barring. They sometimes show a small shaggy crest.
Conservation
The Black-and-white Hawk-Eagle is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2012 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). Despite the fact that the population trend appears to be decreasing, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size may be moderately small to large, but it is not believed to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.