Accipitrimorphae

Accipitrimorphae is a group of birds that includes the Cathartiformes: New World vultures and Accipitriformes: Secretarybird, Osprey and the hawk family, Accipitridae. Together with Falconiformes and Strigiformes, they are called birds of prey or raptors.

Etymology
Accipitrimorphae is derived from the genus Accipiter. From Latin accipiter, accipitris hawk < accipere  to grasp (the original meaning was “to understand” rather than “to seize”) (cf. Med. L. accipiter  Sparrowhawk; ancipiter  Goshawk).

Taxonomy
Accipitrimorphae is a member of the bird clades called Telluraves and Afroaves. They are closely related to owls (Strigiformes), mousebirds (Coliiformes), the Cuckoo Roller (Leptosomiformes), trogons (Trogoniformes), Bucerotiformes, Coraciiformes and Piciformes. They are sister to Australaves, which contains the falcons, seriemas, parrots and passerines.

Members of Accipitrimorphae were once a part of Falconiformes (Sibley and Ahlquist, 1991).

Cathartidae
The New World vultures were once part of the storks (Sibley and Ahlquist, 1990? ), while Sibley and Monroe placed them as a subfamily of Ciconiidae, as a part of the "expanded Ciconiiformes".

This was shown to be untrue, and more recent research (e.g., Hackett et al., 2008 ; Han et al., 2011 ; McCormack et al., 2013 ; Yuri et al., 2013 ) puts the New World vultures close to the Accipitriformes.

Sagittariidae
The Secretarybird is occasionally included in Accipitridae (EDGE).

Pycraft (1902) and Mayr and Amadon (1951) considered it to be closer to the Gruiformes than the Falconiformes.

Pandionidae
The Osprey is sometimes included in Accipitridae (Pinto, 1938 ; Stresemann and Amadon, 1979 ; Sibley and Monroe, 1990 ; Dickinson et al., 2003 ; AOU, 1998 ; Simpson and Day, 1999 and 2010; Brazil, 2009, Garrigues and Dean, 2007 undefined), but some authorities place it in its own family, Pandionidae (American Ornithologists’ Union, 1983 ; del Hoyo et al. 1994, Ferguson-Lees and Christie, 2001 , J.V. Remsen and South American Classification Committee ; Chesser, et. al, 2010 ; Peterson, 1961 [1941]; Hackett et al. 2008 ; Pratt and Beehler, 2014).

Anatomy
All members of Accipitrimorphae have strong bills and sharp talons.