Audubon's Crested Caracara

Audubon’s crested caracara traditionally inhabited dry or wet prairie areas with scattered cabbage palms, pastures, and lightly wooded regions featuring saw palmetto, scrub oaks, and cypress. Changes in land use have affected their habitat preferences. Currently, they can be found in various habitats, including improved pastures, dry prairies, freshwater marshes, mixed upland hardwoods, shrub swamps, shrub and brushland, grassland, pinelands, scrub, and urban areas.

In Florida, caracaras typically nest in territories with improved pastures and lower proportions of forest, oak scrub, and marshland. They prefer cattle ranches with open short grasslands and scattered cabbage palms, live oak, and cypress. Their unusual hunting practice of walking to find prey might explain their preference for less varied pasture environments. Scientists believe this behavior helps caracaras forage and breed successfully in human-modified environments such as roadsides, low-intensity or open developed spaces, row crops, and orchards.

Audubon’s crested caracara is a large bird of prey with a prominent crest, bare face, thick bill, long neck, and long legs. Adult males and females look alike, with dark brownish-black feathers on their crest, wings, back, and lower abdomen. Juveniles have a similar pattern but are more brownish and buffy, with streaks on their breast and upper back. They measure between 19.7 to 25.2 inches (0.64 m) in length and have a wingspan of 47.2 inches (1.2 m). Both sexes weigh between 1.69 and 2.81 pounds (1.27 kg).

Audubon’s crested caracaras were named for their elevated crests. They are known for their distinctive courtship displays, where they perch close together and call out while tilting their heads back. Caracaras form strong pair bonds that last until one partner dies. During nesting, they aggressively defend their territory from other caracaras. Males might engage in aerial fights. They usually start breeding around age three, with about one-third of the young surviving to that age. After fledging, young caracaras follow their parents and beg for food, staying near the nesting site for about two months. Juveniles congregate in communal roosts with non-breeding adults.

Caracaras are highly opportunistic feeders. They eat carrion and hunt live prey, including insects and other invertebrates, fish, snakes, turtles, birds, and mammals. Their diet also includes rabbits, skunks, prairie dogs, opossums, rats, mice, squirrels, frogs, lizards, young alligators, crabs, crayfish, fish, young birds, cattle egrets, beetles, grasshoppers, maggots, and worms.

Caracaras hunt from the ground, from perches, and while flying. They consume roadkill and feed alongside vultures, although they are dominant and may chase vultures away from carcasses. Caracaras may also attack, harass, and steal food from other birds. 

Adult caracaras breed from September to June, with most eggs laid between late December and early February. The incubation period lasts about 33 days, and juveniles reach adult size at five weeks (43-56 days after hatching), with fledging occurring around eight weeks. Adults typically start breeding at about three years old.

Caracaras have a relatively long lifespan, living between nine to twenty-two years in the wild. One caracara in captivity lived for at least 30 years, and the oldest known Florida inhabitant survived for at least 24 years.