Buteo lagopus
The rough-legged buzzard (Europe) or rough-legged hawk is a medium-large bird of prey. It is found in arctic and subarctic regions of North America, Europe, and Asia during the breeding season, and migrates south for the winter. Historically, it was also known as "rough-legged falcon" in such works as John James Audubon's The Birds of America.

Marton Berntsen · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- rough-legged hawkPBDB
- Sits inside
- ButeoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 824.6 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 2 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 14 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 210 ka to 0 Mya.
10 occurrences of Buteo lagopus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
10 occurrences- Pleistocene88%
- Holocene12%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Buteo lagopus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Buteo lagopus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
378 taxa- Corvus corax7 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos6 sites
- Asio flammeus6 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos5 sites
- Bubo virginianus5 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis5 sites
- Falco mexicanus5 sites
- Falco sparverius5 sites
- Zenaida macroura5 sites
- Antigone canadensis4 sites
- Athene cunicularia4 sites
- Charadrius vociferus4 sites
- Falco columbarius4 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus4 sites
- Neophrontops americanus4 sites
- Podiceps nigricollis4 sites
- Sturnella neglecta4 sites
- Tyto alba4 sites
- Accipiter cooperii3 sites
- Anas acuta3 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis3 sites
- Asio otus3 sites
- Buteo regalis3 sites
- Camelops hesternus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Buteo lagopus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
10 references- Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene Avifauna of San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands: Identifications of Previously Unidentified Avian Remains Recovered from Fossil Sites and Prehistoric Cave Deposits1
- Birds of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene from the Palaeolithic Djuktai cave site of Yakutia, eastern Siberia1
- Bird remains from Curata and Bordu Mare caves (Romania)1
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover1
- The late Pleistocene avifauna of Crystal Ball Cave, Utah1
- The late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) avifauna of Little Box Elder Cave, Wyoming1
- Kangiguksuk: A Cultural Reconstruction of a Sixteenth Century Eskimo Site in Northern Alaska1
- Quaternary avian remains from Dark Canyon Cave, New Mexico1
- The fossil Birds of California1
- The avifauna associated with human remains at Rancho la Brea, California1
Each of the 10 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Buteo lagopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Marton Berntsen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Buteo lagopus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itButeo through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Pontoppidan 1763)