They have blackish gray upperparts and a mostly white tail with a wide black band near the end.

Their eye is dark brown, their cere gray, and their legs and feet pale yellow.

[7] The grey-backed hawk is found locally in western Ecuador between southern Esmeraldas and Loja provinces and slightly into Peru's Department of Tumbes.

Its diet includes reptiles, amphibians, crabs, rodents, birds, and large insects.

During the grey-backed hawk's display flights, one bird will make a "drawn-out screeching keeeaaarr-keeeaaarr... (which rises in central portion) or, alternatively, a high-pitched kéééoooowww".

[1] The "combination of clearance for agriculture and timber supplies and intense grazing (by goats and cattle) in understorey has made [the western] Ecuadorian forests one of [the] world’s most threatened ecosystems.