A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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caracara
The caracara is a long-legged falcon that walks. Caracaras stride around on open ground scavenging carrion, turning over dung, following plows and fires, and robbing vultures of what they have found. Several species range from the southern United States to Tierra del Fuego. The crested caracara is the bird on the Mexican coat of arms.
Etymology
The name came into Portuguese and Spanish from Tupi and Guaraní, two Indigenous languages of Brazil and Paraguay, and it is the bird’s rattling call written down. Imitating the call is the commonest way birds get named in any language, but this one survived intact through three colonial languages and straight into scientific Latin, where the southern species stands as Caracara plancus.
Notes
The striated caracara of the Falklands and Tierra del Fuego is among the most inquisitive birds anyone has worked with, and it will take equipment apart for the interest of it. Darwin met them on the Beagle voyage and remarked on how tame and mischievous they were. Northern caracaras forage along roadsides in south Texas.