A hawk is a bird of prey that can measure about thirty centimeters from tail to beak , with grayish, reddish and white feathers. The scientific name of the common sparrowhawk is Accipiter nisus .
Distributed throughout Europe , Asia , North Africa and other regions, this species is characterized by marked sexual dimorphism : males are up to 25% smaller than females. The length of the tail, useful for flying between trees, is another characteristic of hawks.
As for food, hawks feed on other birds and also on smaller animals that they manage to hunt while flying. Due to their attacks on poultry, songbirds and racing or racing pigeons, humans have often tried to combat hawks.
The use of certain types of insecticides to control pests endangered the survival of the sparrowhawk as a species, which was included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature . The ban on certain chemicals, however, contributed to its recovery in recent years.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is known by its acronym IUCN and is the translation of the original English name International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN . It is an international organization that is dedicated to conserving natural resources , that is, those elements that serve living organisms to carry out their natural processes.
The conflict between our species and the hawk has existed for centuries, perhaps as long as humans have been raising game and poultry, two of the hawk's main targets. On the other hand, it is important to point out that there is no irrefutable evidence that links the population increase of hawks with the decline of other species, such as those mentioned above.
Falconry is called hunting that has as its main "tool" a bird of prey , which receives specific training to capture the species desired by the human being who enslaves it. Given the conditions that the hawk meets, it is not surprising that it is one of the most used species in this activity.
The naturalist Félix Samuel Rodríguez de la Fuente , of Spanish origin, was a figure of great importance for his country in relation to rapprochement with nature . Through his television program Man and the Earth he brought his followers closer to landscapes and species that are difficult to access through common means. One of his fields of experience was precisely falconry, which he defended by saying that it was the first time that human beings did not use the whip to dominate the animal.
It should be noted that, beyond the Accipiter nisus , other animals are considered hawks, such as the American hawk ( Accipiter striatus ), the bicolor hawk ( Accipiter bicolor ), the long-tailed hawk ( Accipiter gundlachi ) and the chicken hawk ( Buteo magnirostris ).
In the Looney Tunes animated universe, meanwhile, there is a character inspired by the chicken hawk: Quique Gavilán , or Henery Hawk in English. It is a baby of this species that presents itself as a skilled chicken hunter and that tries to capture the Gallo Claudio , without success.
In 2003, on the other hand, the Colombian television production company RTI Televisión published a soap opera called Pasión de gavilanes, with a script by Julio Jiménez. Among the most notable actors are Danna García, Mario Cimarro, Natasha Klauss and Kristina Lilley. This story, which aired on Telemundo and Caracol Televisión, is based on another soap opera from the same country, Las Aguas Mansas , which RTI had produced in 1994 and had also been written by Julio Jiménez.