I’ve been seeing more red-tailed hawks out and about these last days of autumn. While driving along a busy road, I’ve seen one soaring in the air spreading out its wide, rufous tail and broad wings. Just a few blocks away, I noticed one perched high on a branch with its piercing eyes scanning the ground for meal.
Now is a prime time to search for these common birds of prey in northern Illinois as migrants from the north fly south knowing that soon the snow will be knee-deep making it difficult for them to catch a meal.
Red-tailed hawks live in our region year-round, but the one I saw on a cold November day may have been a winter visitor that spent summer in Canada, then flew south to live in northern Illinois during the colder months. These visitors then look for a niche among the resident red-tailed hawks to set up their feeding territories. Some red-tailed hawks that spent summer here may fly farther south as well — each looking for that perfect spot to spend winter where food is plentiful, before reuniting with a mate to begin nesting in spring.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says this hawk species is so common that those who look carefully may see several of them during a long car ride, anywhere. It’s a fun game while out on a road trip, counting hawks along the way instead of out-of-state license plates. You may see one soar in a wide circle, sometimes even hovering like a helicopter without flapping, if the wind is right. Or one will be perched on a telephone pole, and if you’re lucky, another will be dive bombing a field to snatch an unsuspecting vole or rabbit. We would never see those mammals scurrying about in a field, but the red-tailed hawk has eyesight eight times better than a human’s. From 100 feet in the air, a red-tailed hawk can see a mouse on the ground. This hawk also eats snakes and chipmunks, anything that weighs from an ounce to about five pounds.
It’s easy to identify the adult of the eastern population of the red-tailed hawk because its tail is a bright orange-red, and it almost always has a dark band on its light-colored belly. Immatures, those typically a year old or younger, have no red on their tails, but instead, brown tails with dark, horizontal bars. Red-tailed hawks have a wide variety of color morphs including those that breed in Alaska, which have a dirty white tail and are overall dark.
In winter, there’s a chance of seeing these rare forms in Illinois. A rare dark form red-tailed hawk spent at least six winters at the University of Illinois Campus in Champaign. It had a bright burnt-orange-reddish belly and matching colored tail.
It’s just as exciting to hear a red-tailed hawk as it is to see one, no matter how common they are. It’s been described as a chilling, raspy scream. It doesn’t matter what time of year or where I’m at. When I hear a red-tailed scream, I feel as if I’ve been transported to the wilderness. Movies and television shows often use red-tailed hawk screams in outdoor scenes, but sometimes a bald eagle is shown with the hawk call. The majestic bald eagle has a much, weaker unimpressive call.
Though their bills look menacing, it’s the sharp, knifelike talons on this hawk and other raptors that helps it catch and kill its prey.
Red-tailed hawks were once called chicken hawks, with the belief that they robbed chicken coops. Red-tailed hawks were slaughtered in the early 1900s, but the practice stopped when humans realized these hawks mostly ate rodents, and that raptors benefited rather than harmed us.
If hawks had continued to be shot, the red-tailed may very well have gone the route of the passenger pigeon.
Instead, we today get the chance to experience the wild even in suburban and urban areas by watching and listening to red-tails. Come February and March, red-tailed hawk males will begin courting females and putting on a fantastic sky show that we can watch. The male soars in circle going higher and higher and then dives down quickly in a swoop, only to fly back higher and higher. At some point during this display, he and the female may actually clasp talons and spiral toward the ground before reaching it.
Every winter I watch and listen for red-tailed hawks whenever I’m outdoors, knowing they will begin their courtship displays in spring.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the baiduhai and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to [email protected].