The hawk genus Accipiter shrank from fifty to nine
Forest hawks built for zig-zag chases once crowded into one big genus called Accipiter. Molecular trees showed that pile-up was not a natural family. A 2024 reshuffle moved most species into other genera, leaving only nine true Accipiter hawks—and a missing shoulder-bone hole that helps tell them apart.
Accipiter belongs to the raptor family Accipitridae. The birds are slim, with short broad wings and a long rudder of a tail for threading woodland. Long legs, needle talons, and a hooked bill finish the kit. Females usually outweigh males. Prey is mostly small birds and mammals, taken after a brief ambush dash; the usual flight is a burst of flaps then a glide. French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson coined the genus in 1760 with the Eurasian sparrowhawk as type. The Latin name means hawk and traces to accipere, to grasp. Many sparrowhawks now sit in other genera such as Tachyspiza.
One osteological quirk has been offered as a diagnostic clue. Most birds of prey keep a procoracoid foramen—a hole in the front of the coracoid that carries the supracoracoideus nerve. In most studied Accipiter hawks that hole is absent. Related groups muddy the picture: some Aquila eagles show notches rather than closed holes; Circus harriers can vary even between left and right sides of one bird; genetic work links Circus closely to Accipiter. The African long-tailed hawk Urotriorchis macrourus keeps a well-formed foramen, arguing against membership in Accipiter.
For decades Accipiter held about fifty species, but molecular phylogenies proved the traditional roster non-monophyletic. A densely sampled 2024 study of Accipitridae redraws the map: species moved into five new or resurrected genera so each genus would be monophyletic, leaving nine species in Accipiter. Two island forest hawks long parked here—the crested form of southeast Asia and the Sulawesi specialty—proved only distant cousins and moved into the revived genus Lophospiza. The lesson is taxonomic housekeeping with real stakes for field guides—same woodland hunters, fewer nameplates under Accipiter.
Source: Accipiter
