Red-Shouldered Hawk

by Dawn Currie

Title

Red-Shouldered Hawk

Artist

Dawn Currie

Medium

Photograph - Digital

Description

From Florida Birds Collection by artist Dawn Currie. This Red-Shouldered Hawk drew my attention as he sat perched on a nearby tree in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. He seemed very focused on where his mate was calling to him, and did not take notice of my presence.

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Red Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus): Whether wheeling over a swamp forest or whistling plaintively from a river park, a Red-shouldered Hawk is typically a sign of tall woods and water. It's one of our most distinctively marked common hawks, with barred reddish-peachy underparts and a strongly banded tail. They are the noisiest of the hawks, especially during spring courtship. A perch-hunter of the forest, it feeds on frogs, snakes, lizards, and small mammals.

Red-shouldered Hawks return to the same nesting territory year after year. One hawk occupied a territory in southern California for 16 consecutive years.

The oldest-known Red-shouldered hawk was at least 22 years, 5 months old. It was banded in Florida in 1989, and found dead in Florida in 2009, the victim of an attack by another raptor.

Global populations of Red-shouldered Hawks appear to be stable, though populations in the East appear to have declined after forests were cleared. They are listed as endangered, threatened, or a species of special concern in many eastern U.S. states, with the most drastic declines occurring in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where numbers have fallen as much as 90 percent from historic estimates. I've encountered Red Shouldered Hawks while birding throughout central and southern Florida.

Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge includes 221 square miles of the northern most area of the Florida Everglades. It is one of over 549 national wildlife refuges that form a network of United States lands and waters managed specifically for wildlife.

Uploaded

January 28th, 2014

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