The Seattle Seahawks’ live bird mascot, Taima, is an augur hawk, also known as an augur buzzard, a species of Buteo hawk native to the mountainous regions of Africa.

What kind of hawk?

  • Taima is specifically an augur hawk (often called an augur buzzard), a medium‑large Buteo‑type hawk with a dark head, dark tail, and pale chest.
  • The bird was chosen because its markings and overall look are similar to an osprey, which fits the “seahawk” theme visually even though it is not a sea‑hunting bird.

Why not a real “sea hawk”?

  • True “sea hawks” in ornithology are usually ospreys or skuas, which are fish‑eating or seabird‑raiding species closely associated with marine habitats.
  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife regulations prevent using native species like ospreys for commercial mascots, so the team’s falconer selected an augur hawk as a non‑native raptor that could legally serve as the live mascot.

A few extra Taima facts

  • Taima was hatched at the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis and trained specifically to handle stadium noise and to fly out of the tunnel before home games.
  • Although the live mascot is an augur hawk, the Seahawks’ logo itself is stylized after Indigenous Northwest Coast art (a thunderbird‑like raptor mask), not any one exact bird species.

TL;DR: The Seahawks’ live mascot isn’t a local sea bird at all, but an African augur hawk chosen for its osprey‑like look and because it can be used legally as a trained stadium raptor.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.