The birds we call raptors are not one family but many
Raptors share hooked beaks, tearing talons, and lethal eyesight—yet falcons are only distantly related to hawks and eagles. Owls belong to a separate order entirely. A 2024 genomic study even grouped owls with accipitrids in a new clade called Hieraves, challenging centuries of classification.
Birds of prey, or raptors, are hypercarnivorous hunters of mammals, reptiles, and smaller birds, though vultures and fish eagles also scavenge. The term derives from Latin rapio—to seize by force. Keen distance vision, powerful feet with sharp talons, and curved beaks for tearing flesh define the ecological type. Ornithologists exclude storks, herons, shrikes, and most fish-eating birds from the category despite overlapping diets.
Diurnal raptors now occupy two orders: Accipitriformes—hawks, eagles, buzzards, harriers, kites, Old World vultures, plus secretarybirds and ospreys by some schemes—and Falconiformes for falcons and New World caracaras. Nocturnal owls form Strigiformes. Linnaeus placed all in one order, Accipitres; Vieillot later split owls from diurnal forms. The deprecated Falconimorphae superorder linking falcons and owls was invalidated after 2012. Accipitriformes likely originated about forty-four million years ago when accipitrids diverged from secretarybirds.
Taxonomy remains unsettled. Seriemas and extinct terror birds prey on vertebrates yet were traditionally classified with cranes, not raptors. A 2024 phylogenomic analysis by Wu and colleagues recovered owls and accipitriforms together in Hieraves, sister to Australaves including falcons—upending the long-standing split. Migratory behavior in accipitrids evolved multiple times, with one lineage migrating perhaps twelve to fourteen million years ago. Southern-origin hypotheses, diet breadth, and ecological barriers shape different migration systems across the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia. Ecology blurs the neat labels further: owls fly almost silently because their feathers damp turbulence, yet Australia's letter-winged kite, an accipitrid, also hunts by night. Everyday names add confusion, since many began as labels for particular British species and were stretched to similar birds abroad, which is why Americans call Buteo buzzards hawks and use buzzard for vultures.
Source: Bird of prey
