Description: A large stocky hawk that has a typical light-phase with a whitish breast and rust-colored tail. Young birds are duller, more streaked and lack rust-colored tail of the adult. They are distinguished from Red-shouldered and Swainson�s hawks by their white chest, stocky build, and broader, more rounded wings. This species is quite variable in color, especially in the West, where blackish individuals occur; these usually retain the rusty tail.

Range/Habitat: Breeding takes place throughout North America, from Alaska east to Nova Scotia and southward. They winter in north to southern British Columbia and Maritime Provinces.

Adaptations: The Red-tailed Hawk has extremely keen eyesight and can often be seen perching in a tree at the edge of a meadow, watching for the slightest movement in the grass below.

Courtship/Gestation/Birth: Most hawks build bulky nests of twigs, bark, and leaves high in trees. The eggs are usually white or bluish white, variably blotched and spotted with shades of brown. The young are covered with white down, and are relatively helpless at hatching. They grow slowly, and are dependent on their parents for food even after they have fledged.

Diet: mammals including mice, rats, moles, shrews, squirrels, pocket gophers, cottontails, opossums, muskrats, weasels, how cats (70-85%); birds including ducks, coots, pigeons, quail, rails, gallinules, doves, woodpeckers, songbirds, pheasants, crows and rarely poultry (10-15%); reptiles and amphibians (3-10%); fish (.5%); invertebrates (1-5%).

Remarks: HAWK is the common name for many of the birds of prey of the family Accipitridae, which also includes the eagles and kites, and the harriers, which have often been called "hawks." Members of the genus Buteo are called "hawks" in North America and "buzzards" in the Old World. In the Americas, some members of the related family Falconidae have been called "hawks" in the past; the peregrine falcon, for example, was known as "duck hawk" and the merlin as "pigeon hawk." The osprey is commonly called "fish hawk." There is no clear-cut definition of just what constitutes a "hawk."

Card by Henson Robinson Zoo Education Department.

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