Red-shouldered Hawk

About the Red-shouldered Hawk

The Red-shouldered Hawk is the hawk of the creek bottoms - a medium-sized, richly colored buteo with rusty-red shoulders and barred orange underparts, a boldly black-and-white banded tail, and translucent pale "windows" near the wingtips visible in flight. Its loud, repeated "kee-yer" scream carries through the woods and is often the first sign one is around; Blue Jays imitate it perfectly.

Unlike the open-country Red-tailed Hawk it hunts from a perch inside the woods, dropping on frogs, snakes, crawfish, and small mammals along creeks and pond edges. Pairs are noisy and conspicuous in late winter and spring, circling and calling over their territories.

In Texas the Red-shouldered Hawk is a year-round resident of the wooded eastern half of the state, west through the creek corridors and wooded parks of the Austin area, and it has adapted well to older neighborhoods and greenbelts with big trees.