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Articles

Vol. 49 No. 2 (2018)

NESTING OF THE CRESTED CARACARA IN ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, ARIZONA

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21199/WB49.2.9
Submitted
September 17, 2025
Published
April 1, 2018

Abstract

In the United States, breeding of the Crested Caracara (Caracara cheriway) has been documented in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Arizona (Morrison and Dwyer 2012, Jenness 2015). In Arizona, the caracara has been long familiar to the Tohono O’odham (Rea 2007), but the first nest reported in the scientific literature was found in 1960, in the Tohono O’odham Nation (Levy 1961). More nests were discovered there in the 1970s (Levy 1961, Ellis et al. 1988). From 1986 to 1988, Levy (1988) observed 21 nests in this area. Only two nests were known outside the Tohono O’odham Nation at that time, one west of Tucson (in 1964) and one north of Tucson (in 1988). In the last decade at least 15 active nests have been found in Arizona outside of the Tohono O’odham Nation, north and west of Tucson in the North Altar Valley and on the Santa Cruz Flats (D. Jenness pers. comm.).

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