Endemic to Cuba, it is now known only from a tiny area of evergreen and gallery forest in the far east of the island, mainly in the mountainous region between Moa and Baracoa in Holguín and Guantánamo provinces. In the air, it looks like a small, soft-coloured hawk: males are slate-grey above with a long, banded tail and finely barred grey-and-white underparts, while females are browner, with warmer, rufous-tinged barring. Both sexes have a yellowish bill and pale, greenish to bluish-white eyes that stand out in the shaded forest. The beak is the bird’s most distinctive feature—thick and deeply hooked, almost parrot-like rather than hawk-like—giving its genus name Chondrohierax, “cartilage hawk,” a very literal feel.

That odd bill design makes perfect sense once you see what the Cuban kite eats. Unlike most raptors that go after birds, rodents or lizards, this kite is a snail and slug specialist. It hunts in the forest understory and along river-edge trees, searching leaves and branches for large arboreal tree snails and big terrestrial slugs. When it finds one, it uses that hooked bill to punch into the shell and delicately extract the soft body, often returning to a favourite perch to eat. Beneath these perches, observers find tell-tale piles of opened snail shells and droppings—sometimes the easiest way to know a Cuban kite is around. By feeding so heavily on native tree snails, it plays a unique ecological role, linking the fate of a raptor to the survival of brightly coloured Cuban molluscs such as Polymita.

For much of the twentieth century, the bird slipped steadily out of view. Once considered fairly common in some eastern mountain areas, it became rare after the mid-1900s as forests along rivers and hillsides were logged, cleared for agriculture, or degraded by charcoal production and road building.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

Cuba

50-250

Official estimate

CR

2020