In early June of 1826, John James Audubon spotted a bird perching on “the top of a high belted tree in an erect and commanding attitude” while crossing a cotton field near St. Francisville, Louisiana. The shot that Audubon took brought the bird down but did not kill it. Audubon gathered up the bird and used it as a rare live specimen for a drawing in Birds of America. The chance to draw a live specimen was on top of the bird appearing to be a new species for science. Audubon named the bird a Black Warrior. Appreciating none whatsoever being shot nor its new name, the bird refused all forms of food that Audubon offered and starved to death.
Audubon admitted that the Black Warrior compared closely to the Red-tailed hawk (Plate 51). The notable difference, other than the color, was that the Black Warrior was “considerably smaller.” Audubon also noticed on the other occasions that he saw the bird in the field was that the flight of the Black Warrior was “rapid, greatly protracted, and so powerful as to enable it to seize its prey with apparent ease, or effect its escape from its stronger antagonist, the Red-Tail, which pursues it on all occasions.”
Audubon applied the scientific name of Falco Harlani to the Black Warrior in honor of Richard Harlan (1796-1843). Harlan was among the slight few in the scientific community in Philadelphia who supported the efforts of John James Audubon to create Birds of America. For the later octavo edition of Birds of America, Audubon gave Harlan the additional honor of changing the common name for the Black Warrior to Harlan’s Buzzard. Harlan’s Buzzard is currently a subspecies of the Red-tailed hawk and is known commonly as Harlan’s hawk.