Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Red Goshawk
| Red Goshawk | ||||||||||||||
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 Juvenile Red Goshawk close to fledging. | ||||||||||||||
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| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||
| Erythrotriorchis radiatus (Latham, 1802) |
The Red Goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiatus) is probably the rarest Australian bird of prey. It is found mainly in the savanna woodlands of northern Australia, particularly near watercourses. It takes a broad range of live prey, mostly birds.
The Red Goshawk used to be regarded as a very large member of the goshawk subfamily, but it is now believed that the goshawk resemblance is convergent. Experts now group the Red Goshawk with the superficially dissimilar Black-breasted Buzzard and Square-tailed Kite as one of the Australasian old endemic raptors. It is believed that the ancestors of these birds, possibly together with a handful of species from South-east Asia and Africa, occupied Gondwana and over the millenia have diverged into their current forms.
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