Accipitrimorphae

Accipitrimorphae is a group of birds that includes the New World vultures, Secretarybird, Osprey and the hawk family, Accipitridae.

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, 2003; AOU, 2008; 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 et al. 2001, J.V. Remsen and South American Classification Committee; Chesser, et. al, 2010).