Taking a back road the other day I was rewarded with a keen view of an old friend. As the road eased down a small hill to a four-way stop, a red-tailed hawk streaked from left to right about 50 feet in front of me, windshield high.
The afternoon sun lit up the hawk’s beauty. Barred chestnut on top. Rusty tail feather confirming the raptor’s identity, as if confirmation was needed.
The bird swooped across my vision with serious intent, possibly targeting a small mammal in the cut hayfield. There wasn’t any traffic ahead so I watched the bird intently as it eased up and landed on a round hay bale near the hill’s crest.
Maybe a field mouse had been alerted by a shadow and ducked out of the way. That perch would serve as a fine lookout if the rodent reemerged. Or maybe it was just a handy place to rest.
If there’s one wildlife constant in my life spent living across the West, and more recently, the Great Plains, it’s red-tailed hawks. Those rusty tail feathers have always been there, flashing in the sunlight whenever I’ve encountered this full-bodied hawk, second in size only to the ferruginous hawk in North America.
They were the most common raptors above the hillside behind the old family home in southern California where I grew up. The prevailing winds that came in from the west formed the perfect current for kiting, a raptor hunting method in which they hover motionless in the current until they spot a meal and tuck their wings in for the attack.
Redtails kiting above the westerly facing slope behind my childhood home were a constant presence.
Then in the last decade or so they moved from the hills into the subdivision, nesting atop towering fan palms. Kestrels once ruled that roost, but the red tails have since claimed those trees.
Anywhere in the West you’re never far from red-tailed hawks. Drive down a dirt road somewhere and it’s almost a certainty that the large raptor that lifted off from the telephone pole on you approached was a redtail. Our whole dang country is redtail habitat.
As is all of the North American continent, other than the farthest northern reaches of the Arctic, the isthmus of Central America, and Hawaii. Hawaii has only one native hawk, the aptly named Hawaiian hawk, which is a close relative of the redtail.
Montana redtails are a mix of resident birds and winter migrants. Only the westernmost edge of the state has year-round resident birds. That might include the Flathead, but the valley is also visited by Harlan’s hawks, a Canadian subspecies of redtails that migrates south for winter.
There is a wide range of color phases for red-tailed hawks, but generally, Harlin’s have more contrasty white and dark, almost black plumage. And they lack the Texas Longhorns’ burnt orange tail feathers. Harlin’s have gray tails.
While redtails have been a constant and often annoyed companion to my outdoor wanderings, I learned while chasing chukar in the winter in Wyoming that the raptors I most often saw on those chilly hunts were not redtails but rough-legged hawks.
It’s a near impossibility if one is even a mildly observant human living in the United States that they might never have set eyes on a red-tailed hawk. Pale Male, a young male redtail, even reclaimed New York’s Central Park in the early 1990s and lived there until he died in 2023. There was even a feature film made about that bird.
And you’ve certainly heard one. The redtail voice is as ubiquitous in film as is the chi-kaw-go call of Gambel’s quail. That redtail screech is so iconic it’s dubbed in, even for eagles.
Whenever I see or hear a redtail it makes me feel at home, which is kind of handy when you’ve moved around as much as I have.