Which is Britain's smallest bird of prey?
Bird of prey travelled further, the familiar names were applied to new birds with similar characteristics. Names that have generalised this way include: kite ("Milvus milvus"), sparrow-hawk or sparhawk ("Accipiter nisus"), goshawk ("Accipiter gentilis"), kestrel ("Falco tinninculus"), hobby ("Falco subbuteo"), harrier (simplified from "hen-harrier", "Circus cyaneus"), buzzard ("Buteo buteo"). Some names have not generalised, and refer to single species (or groups of closely related (sub)species): merlin ("Falco columbarius"), osprey ("Pandion haliaetus"). The taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus grouped birds (class Aves) into orders, genera, and species, with no formal ranks between genus and order. He placed all birds of prey into a single order,
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;