Bird of prey and may be raised to an order of their own, Cathartiiformes. The secretary bird and/or osprey are sometimes listed as subfamilies of Acciptridae: Sagittariinae and Pandioninae, respectively. Australia's letter-winged kite is a member of the family Accipitridae, although it is a nocturnal bird. The nocturnal birds of prey – the owls – are classified separately as members of two extant families of the order Strigiformes: Below is a simplified phylogeny of Telluraves which is the clade where the birds of prey belong to along with passerines and several near-passerine lineages. The orders in bold text are birds of prey orders;
Origin of birds between "Archaeopteryx" and modern birds, phylogenetic taxonomists, in keeping with tradition, almost always use "Archaeopteryx" as a specifier to help define Aves. Aves has more rarely been defined as a crown group consisting only of modern birds. Nearly all palaeontologists regard birds as coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. Within Coelurosauria, multiple cladistic analyses have found support for a clade named Maniraptora, consisting of therizinosauroids, oviraptorosaurs, troodontids, dromaeosaurids, and birds. Of these, dromaeosaurids and troodontids are usually united in the clade Deinonychosauria, which is a sister group to birds (together forming the node-clade Eumaniraptora) within the stem-clade Paraves. Other studies have proposed alternative