Laughing Falcon Mocks Your Misfortune

There is literally nothing on the internet that interests me today; the only thing I found interesting enough to read fully was this three-sentence description of Canadian primates on Wikipedia:

The only primates that live in Canada are human beings. They are only distantly related to the New World monkeys of Central and South America, and the species originated in east Africa. Humans first arrived in large numbers to Canada around 15,000 years ago from North Asia, and surged in migration starting 400 years ago from around the world, especially from Europe.

Which is pretty funny but not really enough for a post, you know? So I’m just going to talk about a cool bird for awhile.

The laughing falcon is a medium-sized bird of prey with a goofy-looking swoop of white feathers on its head, native to Latin America, from northern Mexico to Paraguay. It’s sometimes called a snake hawk, because it is the only known bird of prey to rely on snakes as prey. Even poisonous snakes. Sometimes especially poisonous snakes. Pretty cool!

(As a side note, if you’re wondering how to tell the difference between hawks and falcons, good question: generally, falcons are smaller, with a more extreme curve to their beaks, than hawks. Hawks typically catch prey with their talons, while falcons catch prey with their beaks. Mostly. This all gets messy because a few falcon species are informally known as hawks; the laughing falcon is AKA the snake hawk, and the peregrine falcon is AKA the duck hawk. But they are different!)

The best part about the laughing falcon is how it got its name: it has a call like Nelson Muntz from “The Simpsons.” Here you go:

HAW-HAWWWW. Haha. Good bird.

Photo by SussexBirder