SPECIES

Orange-breasted Falcon Falco deiroleucus Scientific name definitions

Robert Berry, Christopher L. Wood, and Brian L. Sullivan
Version: 1.0 — Published March 4, 2020
Text last updated September 1, 2009

Priorities for Future Research

Introduction

Orange-breasted Falcon is widely distributed, and so on a global basis often is considered to be not threatened. Yet the species typically occurs only at very low densities. It will be important to have a better understanding of the population dynamics of the Orange-breasted Falcon, especially in the face of large-scale population declines such as that which took place in southern Central America. The Peregrine Fund conducted ground and aerial surveys for cliff-nesting Orange-breasted Falcons during the spring of 1999 and 2000 in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama and failed to detect any birds away from the Darién Province, Panama (16). Still, they suggested that efforts should be made to look for tree-nesting birds in the following locales:

Honduras

Sierra del Warunta range of Honduras

La Mosquita Region


Nicaragua

La Mosquitia Region


Panama

Coclé

Bocas del Toro

Veraguas

Chagrés

The northernmost breeding population of Orange-breasted Falcons, in Guatemala and in Belize, also continues to decline. Understanding the reasons for this trend may be critical to the long-term survival of the species.

Also poorly understood is nest site selection, especially in areas (such as in central South America) that are far from the cliff sites on which Orange-breasted Falcons typically nest in Central America, the Andes, and in northern South America: to what extent are trees used as nesting sites?

Recommended Citation

Berry, R., C. L. Wood, and B. L. Sullivan (2020). Orange-breasted Falcon (Falco deiroleucus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.orbfal1.01