Hook-billed Kite

38 - 42 cm. Variable. The gray male is bluish slate, paler below: below narrowly barred with white or buff: upper tail coverts tipped and barred with white, tail plumbeous or black, tipped white and with two broad white or pale gray bands: flight feathers above barred black: undersides conspicuously barred with black and white: iris white, pale green or bluish gray: bill pale yellow green, maxilla black: cere and facial skin greenish yellow: supraloral skin bright yellow: feet orange yellow.<nVariants include birds without ventral barring, with cinnamon barring and a cinnamon or tawny nuchal semicollar.<nThe black male is mainly fuscous black: the tail is white tipped with a single white median band. <nThe brown female has forehead and sides of head gray: pileum and upper back dark gray, russet nuchal semicollar: wings and lower back brown: tail black, narrowly white tipped and with two broad white bands: underparts whitish with russet bars.<nThe immature is dark brown above, creamy white below with a white nuchal collar and three or four light and dark tail bands.

10 - 15 fast kikikikiki ... notes.

Hunts from perches in the canopy, subcanopy or understory for snails, lizards, insects. Rarely soars low over canopy.

Forests, forest borders. Vagrant in Estado S<C4>o Paulo.

Inland throughout but rare. In Estado S<C4>o Paulo reported from <8E>Santa Lucia, Campininha ^119 .