The Science of Birds - Red-tailed Hawk

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

This is Episode 79. It's all about the Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).This is one of North America’s most common raptors. We find these birds from sea to shining sea across the continent.The Redtail is a generalist predator. It can eat many kinds of prey and thrive in a broad range of habitats. Besides seeing these birds along the highway, you’re likely to spot a Red-tailed Hawk circling in the sky over a field, soaring or flapping slowly.In this episode, I cover the key traits of the Red-tailed Hawk, it's diet, and its breeding behaviors. Links of InterestRed-tailed Hawk ProjectRed-tailed Hawk “kiting” [VIDEO]Red-tailed Hawk and Great Horned Owl fight over a nest [VIDEO]Pale Male, the Famous Central Park Hawk, Is Dead at 32. Maybe.  ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

I have done a lot of driving along the freeways, highways, and back roads of the Western U.S. Like, a lot, a lot. After 30 years of driving in the Western States, over countless thousands of miles, I've seen many animals hanging out on the side of the road. Deer, pronghorn, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and of course, lots of birds. One bird in particular is so large, majestic, and abundant that it's hard to miss. That bird is the red-tailed hawk. This raptor is pretty much a standard feature of highways in the western U.S., and actually across most of North America. Sometimes I've been driving down the Interstate 5 freeway and I've seen hawk after hawk every couple of miles

perched on a fence post or tree branch on the side of the road. It's like I'm having deja vu or experiencing a glitch in the matrix. Maybe distance along these roads could be measured not in miles but in hawks. And while we're at it, maybe a better name for the red-tailed hawk would be roadside hawk. Let me just check to see if that name is available. Roadside hawk. Ah, dang, that's right. There's already a bird with that name.

Seriously, its official name is the roadside hawk, and it has the scientific name Rupornis Magnarostris. It's a widespread species found from Mexico, south to Argentina. Fine, I guess we'll stick with calling our North American bird the red-tailed hawk. Well, at least the red-tailed hawk has a unique call that sets it apart. I'm sure no one will ever confuse the shrieking call of this bird with the voice of any other raptor.

Hello and welcome. This is the science of birds! I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a light-hearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This episode, which is number 79, is all about the red-tailed hawk, beautio-jamakensis. But in an alternate universe, this episode would be about the Golden Eagle. That's because I recently asked my supporters on Patreon, using a pole, which species they'd like this episode to be about.

There were two choices, and the red-tailed hawk ended up beating the Golden Eagle 67% to 33%. So here we are, talking about the hawk. The Golden Eagle is an amazing bird, too, and I'm sure I'll do it justice with a podcast episode someday. And hey, by the way, if you'd like to vote in polls to decide the topics of some of these podcast episodes, please consider joining my Patreon community. You can support the show and, bonus, have an influence on its content. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to patreon.com slash science of birds. So, the red-tailed hawk, Beautio, Jamaicensis. This is one of North America's most common raptors. We find these birds from sea to shining sea across the continent. The

global population for the species is estimated at somewhere between 2 and 3 million. Das a lot of hawk, you guys! For those of you listening in Europe, the red-tailed hawk is sort of like our version of your common buzzard, Budio-Budio. These species are fairly close relatives, both being in the genus, Budio. And if you live in Australia, maybe you can think of the red-tailed hawk as being as familiar to us in the U.S. as is your black kite or whistling kite. Something like that. The red tail, as we often just call these birds red tails, this bird is a generalist predator. It can eat

many kinds of prey and thrive in a broad range of habitats. It's a jack of all trades, a hawk of all trades. Besides seeing this bird along the highway, you're likely to spot a red-tailed hawk circling in the sky over a field, soaring or flapping slowly. Unlike most other large North American raptors, red tails will sometimes face into strong winds and appear to hover with their wings outstretched. This behavior is called kiting. This is where a bird acts, more or less, like a toy kite. It faces into the wind and soars, maintaining its position so that it appears to hover without needing to flap its wings. While kiting, a red-tailed hawk hangs in the air and looks down, scanning the ground for prey. Now we'll get into what this bird eats a little later,

but for the moment I want to address the scientific name of the red-tailed hawk. Did you notice anything strange about it? Budio Jamaicansis. The second part, the specific epithet, has the word Jamaica in there. When you see a scientific name that ends with the Latin suffix ensis, E-N-S-I-S-S-I-S, that means from or of. Jamaicaensis means from Jamaica. So are all red-tailed hawks from Jamaica? Do they greet each other by saying, Waguan in Jamaican patois? Well, maybe they do, I don't know. But as far as I do know,

these birds don't have any special biological or ecological connection to the island of Jamaica. There are red tails in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean. But these birds are everywhere else in North America, too. So here's where the species got the name Jamaicansis. It was first described by Western scientists, officially, way back in 1781. The specimen used for the original description was from, you guessed it, Jamaica. That first red-tailed hawk specimen would be what scientists call the type specimen,

the one used for the official description of a newly discovered species. And since the type specimen was taken in Jamaica, that island country is the type locality of the red-tailed hawk. The name Beautio Jamaicensis made its debut in the 13th edition of Linnaeus' book Systema Natchuri. But the common name for the bird given in that dusty old tome was not red-tailed hawk. Nope, it was called the cream-colored buzzard. Fun stuff, right? But I suppose we should get on with the show.

Let's learn all about the cream-colored buzzard. The red-tailed hawk has a body shape similar to that of other species in the genus Budial. It's a large hawk with broad, rounded wings, perfect for soaring. And while soaring, it sometimes holds it. its wings slightly raised above the horizontal plane. This gives the bird a shallow V-shape when seen from straight on. Ornithologists call this shape a dihedral. That's spelled D-I-H-E-D-R-A-L. Another well-known North American bird that holds its wings in a dihedral is the turkey vulture. The red tail's eponymous tail is relatively short and wide, and yes, the tail feathers are

generally a reddish color. Not so much a scarlet or fire engine red, but more of a rusty or rufus color. So maybe a better name for this species would be the Rufus-tailed hawk. Let me just make sure that name is available. Rufus-tailed hawk. Ah, seriously, there's already a bird named the Rufus-Tailed Hawk. It's Beautio Ventralis, and it lives in southern South America. You know, trying to rename the red-tailed hawk is sort of like trying to come up with a band name or a business name. You come up with a super cool, seemingly unique name, then you look to see if the domain name, the dot-com name, is available, and...

Nope. Some other Joker has already claimed it. It's like, roadside hawk? Nope, taken. Rufus-tailed hawk? Nope, taken. Geez. Anyway, let me get back on track and talk a little about the body size of the red-tailed hawk. Like other members of the hawk and eagle family, Axippitrity, the red-tailed hawk shows size dimorphism between the sexes, with the ladyhawk being significantly larger and heavier than the male. On average, females are 25% heavier than males. Lengthwise, female red tails are between 19 and 26 inches from beak to tail.

That's 48 to 66 centimeters. Males are only 18 to 22 inches long, or about 46 to 56 centimeters. The largest female red-tailed hawks soaring high in the sky can look almost like eagles at first. They're that big. Now, moving on to the bill and the eyes. The hooked bill is dark gray, while the seer, C-E-R-E, is a pale yellow color.

The seer is a waxy, sort of fleshy feature of the upper beaks of some birds, like hawks, pigeons, and parrots. It's where you find the nostrils. The eyes of a mature adult red-tailed hawk are a soft brown color, but juveniles and young adults have yellow irises. Like the sear on the bill, the legs of a red-tail are yellow, and the talons are black. And speaking of talons, the red-tailed hawk has larger than usual claws and feet,

compared to most other birds in the genus Beautio. It's got a fearsome set of talons to grab and hold on to its prey. Okay, so this now brings us to the feathers. What is the plumage coloration and patterning of the red-tailed hawk? Oh, boy, that is not an easy question to answer. But I'll try, and I'll try to keep this relatively simple. The vast majority of adult red-tailed hawks swooping round out there do indeed have rusty red tails. If you see a large hawk with broad wings and a red

tail, you've got yourself a bona fide beauty-o-jamakensis, assuming you're in North America. But keep in mind that the tails of juveniles are not red. Juvenile tails are a pale brown color, and they have seven to nine dark bars running across them. The other tell-tale feature that's easy to see on most, but not all, Red Tales, is the dark Patagial mark. What does Patagial mean? This is an adjective referring to an anatomical feature of a bird's wing called the Patagium. That's spelled P-A-T-A-G-I-U-M.

The Patagium is the wing's leading edge, a stretchy fold of feathered skin that runs from the bird's shoulder to its wrist. The brown or black pategial marks on a red-tailed hawk are on the underside of the wings, so you can see them when one of these birds is circling around overhead. But here's where things get more complicated. There is a lot of plumage, color, and pattern variation among individual red-tailed hawks. In many populations, there are dark morphs and light morphs and variations in between. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in anything, but I'm definitely not an expert in the plumage variation

among and within red-tailed hawk populations and subspecies. I mean, we could spend hours here trying to sort it all out together. We could, but we're not. Just know that some red tails are pale and others are dark. On the dark-morph red tails, you might not be able to see those characteristic dark petagial marks. Some of the color variation we're talking about here is related to subspecies within the species beauty-o-jamakensis. We'll come back to look at those subspecies in a few minutes.

But right now, let's move on to talk about the voice of the red-tailed hawk. The harsh scream of an adult red-tailed hawk is one of the most iconic bird sounds in the world. These hawks usually belt out their screams while soaring, but sometimes they do it while perched. And here's the sound I'm talking about. You know it and you love it. But wait, isn't that the cry of the majestic bald eagle? Isn't that the unmistakable, fearsome call of America's national bird? Well, if we believe what movies have told us all our lives, then yeah, that we're would be true. But it isn't. And maybe this isn't a surprise to you, but Hollywood has been using

recordings of the red-tailed hawk scream for decades as the voice of pretty much every raptor shown on the silver screen, including, and especially the bald eagle. In reality, the typical call of a bald eagle sounds quite different. It sounds like this. So, red-tailed hawk? Bald Eagle Got it? It turns out you can't believe everything you see in the movies. But seriously, I've even seen so-called reality TV shows where they play the red-tailed call

while showing some other bird of prey. That's egregious, man. It's lazy and unacceptable. It's like when they play a chimpanzee sound for any primate. Or when they use a chimpanzee sound for any primate. the call of the Pacific Chorus Frog for any frog. This stuff drives me crazy. So here's an idea, Hollywood.

You can hire me as, I don't know, let's say my title is Zoological Realism Consultant. You hire me to make sure every bird and every other animal you show in your movie makes the correct sound. And I'll also make sure each species is appropriate for the geographic location. No more of this nonsense about polar bears hanging out with penguins or old world vultures hopping around in North American deserts or macaws living in Hawaii. For my services as a zoological realism consultant, all I ask is $1,000 per hour.

Like all other hawks and eagles in the world, the red-tailed hawk belongs to the avian family Axipatridi. No, I haven't done a podcast episode on this family yet, but you better believe I will. The next taxonomic level below family is genus. Our red tail is in the genus Budio, B-U-T-E-O. There are about 27 other raptors in this genus. In the old world, people call these birds buzzards. In the new world, we call them hawks. Budio-Giamakensis is one of about nine beautiful beautio-hawks in North America. And it's one of the largest in terms of body size. It's a beefy beautio. So who is the red-tailed hawks? closest relative among all these beautios. From what I can tell, ornithologists haven't quite

figured this out yet. But some studies using DNA analyses suggest that the species most closely related to the red tail is either the broad-winged hawk or our old friend the Rufus-tailed hawk from South America. Now, let's return to looking at variation within the species' Beauty Ojamagensis. I mentioned earlier that there are sub-species of the red-tailed hawk, 16 of them, actually. Or is it 14? Or 12? Well, it depends on which ornithologist you ask, because there's some debate among ornithologists about the subspecies of this hawk. Each of the various subspecies generally corresponds to a distinct geographic region. For example, there's the Florida red-tailed hawk,

Beautio-Gemakensis umbrinus. And there's the Cuban red-tailed hawk, Budio-Gamacensis solitudeinus, found in Cuba and the Bahamas. In case you didn't know, and I don't think I've already talked about this on the podcast, when you're giving the scientific name of a subspecies, a subspecies, it has three parts.

The genus, the specific epithet, and the sub-specific epithet. it. So that's why you've got names like Beautio, Jamaicanis, solitudeinus. Anyway, for over 200 years, ornithologists have been enthusiastically subdividing the red-tailed hawk into all of these subspecies. Each subspecies has been defined, not just by where it lives,

but also by some unique set of physical features. Features like body size, wing length, plumeage color, pattern and even things like the diameter of the toes. Biologists call this sort of data morphometric data. Red-tail subspecies have been defined primarily by their morphometrics so far. But among some of the subspecies, the physical differences are so subtle that just about anyone would have a hard time telling them apart in the field. An alternative scientific approach to defining subspecies, one that in my opinion is more trustworthy, is to use genetic information from DNA. And luckily, this kind of research is happening as we speak. There's a supergroup of

biologists working together under the banner of the Red-Tailed Hawk Project. One of the major areas of focus for these researchers is using genetic data from the genome of the Red-Tailed Hawk to sort out which subspecies are the real deal and which of them are just figments of someone's imagination. According to the folks at the Red-Tailed Hawk Project, the number of currently recognized subspecies is 14. But as we learn more about this bird, that number is probably going to change one way or another. I'll tell you a little about two of those 14 subspecies because they seem to get a bit more attention among birders and in our bird field guides. The first is Criders Red-Tailed Hawk, Beautio-Gemakensis Crideri, and that's Crideri with a K.

This is a very pale, more or less white, form of the red tail. The tail feathers are white with washed out rusty or pinkish tips. The Criter's subspecies breathes in the northern Great Plains. in South Dakota and Wyoming and north into south central Canada. But is this a real genetically distinct population worthy of being treated as a subspecies? Or is Kreider's red-tailed hawk merely a pale morph of some other subspecies? Who knows? This is still an open debate, but the researchers at the Red-Tailed Hawk Project are currently working on sorting out the

validity and status of the Crider's subspecies. So hopefully we'll get some answers at some point. Until then, I'm sorry to say you're probably going to have many sleepless nights ahead, where you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, going around and around in your mind about the true nature of those pale hawks we call Beautio-Gamaicances Crideri. The next subspecies has more believers among ornithologists. Harlan's red-tailed hawk, often just called Harlan's hawk, is a super-dark form of the species. Beautio-Gemakensis Harlan-Eye is dark brown overall, but with whitish flight feathers in the wings. And importantly, the tail is whitish with a dark tip.

In other words, this red tail does not have a red tail. It's the most dramatically distinct of the 14 subspecies. In fact, Harlan's Hawk is so different morphologically, morphometrically, that once upon a time ornithologists considered it to be a full-on species. The Harlan-I subspecies is a long-distant migrant that breeds in the interior of Alaska and the Yukon and Canada. It'll be interesting to see how our understanding of all this variation in the Red-Tailed Hawk gets updated as more research is published in the coming years. I mean, who knows? Maybe ornithologists will discover that, in fact, the Red-Tailed Hawk has 127 subspecies. In that case,

there might even be a subspecies unique to Portland, Oregon, where I live. I would name it Buteo-Gemakensis Portlandia, the weird red-tailed hawk. We could call it the weird tale for short. You know, because the unofficial motto of the city is Keep Portland Weird? Anyway, as convoluted as it might be, the high degree of variation in the red tail is one of the things that makes this bird really cool and really interesting to study.

This widespread generalist raptor might have a lot to teach us about the evolution and genetic basis of polymorphism in birds. Polymorphism, you can probably guess, is the existence of multiple morphs or forms within a species. The red-tailed hawk is a highly polymorphic critter. In the warm months of spring and summer, you'll see red-tailed hawks soaring to and fro all over North America. They breed from Alaska all the way down to Panama. The species is actually more widespread these days than it was a few hundred years ago. As European Americans chopped down the forests of eastern North America, red tails expanded into that region. And over the last 100 years or so, the species has become more common in the Great Plains.

In this case, it's because there are actually more trees in that region. The plains used to be vast grasslands, but people have altered the ecosystem and now there are many more trees. So that's interesting, right? Fewer trees in one region caused an increase in red-tailed hawks. But in another region, but in another region, a similar increase in hawkiness was caused by an increase in tree cover. And this brings us to the subject of habitat. The Red Tail prefers to breed in open or semi-open habitats that have plenty of elevated nesting

and perching sites. We are talking elevated sites like tall trees, cliffs, or buildings. Even desert habitats will work as long as there are some. some large cactuses, like saguarrows around. Basically, the red-tailed hawk doesn't like dense forests or treeless grasslands. So now you can imagine how human-caused changes to the amount of tree cover in North America have allowed red-tails to expand their range. Suburban and urban habitats work perfectly well for some of these hawks.

They're commonly seen swooping around in New York City, for example. With possibly more than three million red tails out there in the world, the species is not considered threatened or endangered. So there isn't really much for me to report regarding the conservation of the red-tailed hawk. And that's a good thing. Most of these birds are residents where they live. In other words, they don't migrate. But populations in the far north, like those in Alaska and parts of Canada, are migratory.

Most of the hawks that breed up there high-tail it south in autumn before the weather gets too cold. So we would say that, as a species, the red-tailed hawk is a partial migrant. Most of the hawks that do migrate don't fly more than about 1,000 miles, or 1,500 kilometers. and they don't seem to like crossing bodies of water greater than about 15 miles or 25 kilometers from shore to shore. In the middle and lower latitudes, you're probably going to see significantly more red tails loitering around in the winter months than in the breeding season.

Now, that might seem counterintuitive, but imagine you've got your resident hawks and then here comes a bunch of migrants from the north. migrants and residents all crowd into the same habitats during the winter. I imagine the resident hawks dread winter. They're like, well, it's October, you guys. Everything's still nice and quiet around here, and there are plenty of rabbits for us. But those northern idiots are going to show up any day now.

They're going to sit on our telephone poles, and they're going to eat our rabbits and voles. I wish they would just, I don't know, just keep on flying south and go annoy the resident hawks in Costa Rica or something. Anywhere but here. Eight out of ten kids would agree that raptors like hawks and eagles are cool because they're bloodthirsty killing machines. They've got wicked talons and powerful.

beaks adapted for ripping animal flesh. Yay! Red-tailed hawks are indeed killing machines. They kill lots and lots of things, like it's their job, because it basically is their job. Almost 500 different small animal species have ended up in the bellies of red-tailed hawks. And that's just what scientists have been able to document. Who knows how many more small animal species have been eaten. by these hawks. What an individual hawk eats depends on the region, the season, and its personal

preferences. However, the main thing red tails eat is small to medium-sized mammals. Critters like voles, mice, ground squirrels, rabbits, and hares. About 85% of the hawks diet is rodents. But as opportunistic generalist predators, red-tailed hawks also eat a wide variety of insects, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. One of their favorite birds to eat is the northern flicker, and they also like pheasants and quail. They target the largest prey animals that they can reasonably handle, because, I guess, more bang for the buck and whatnot. Red-tailed hawks have no shame in eating dead things that they did not themselves murder. They'll eat fresh carrion on the road or wherever. One of the common names used for Beautio-Gemakensis, just until a few decades ago, was chicken hawk.

Some farmers who raised chickens persecuted the hawks, considering them varmints and blasted them with shotguns. Now, this has been illegal for over a hundred years since the red-tailed hawk is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The so-called chicken hawks were accused of killing chickens, of course. And yes, red-tailed hawks will attack and eat domestic chickens from time to time. However, my understanding is that most red-tails aren't particularly passionate about eating hens and roosters. They're more interested in eating mammals and native birds.

But when it is time for a red-tail to go on the hunt, the primary approach it takes is not streaking through the sky like a bullet. That would be more the style of a peregrine falcon. No, the red-tailed hawk takes it way easier. It prefers to sit and wait. It uses a perch that affords a good view of the surroundings. The need for perches to sit and wait upon is why this species is found only where there are some trees or similarly elevated structures around.

So the red tail sits and waits. Then it sits and waits some more. When it finally spots a potential victim, the hawk swoops down to make a relatively slow, calculated attack. It stretches its feet forward in the final moments to snatch the prey animal in its supersized talons. A hawk may also attack while flying around, especially while kiting or flapping its wings into the wind to hover for a moment. It scans the ground below for small animals, then dives down for the kill. Meals are usually carried up to an elevated perch for butchering and eating. An adult red-tailed hawk is a formidable bird. As such, it doesn't really have to

worry too much about being eaten by any other predatory animals. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't have any enemies. Red tails have plenty of those. For starters, these hawks get attacked by all kinds of passerine birds. Birds like red-winged blackbirds, kingbirds, grackles, blue jays, mockingbirds, and crows will harass a red-tailed hawk in an attempt to chase off the predator. This behavior, This behavior is called mobbing. The mobbing birds may peck or scratch at the red tail, and they certainly make a lot of loud alarm calls. If we could translate these calls into English,

I'd probably have to bleep out most of the words. The insults coming out of those tiny bird beaks wouldn't be suitable for the delicate ears of my listeners. You might think those smaller birds wouldn't be able to phase a large hawk. But they can. Their tiny but fierce mobbing attacks might not cause serious injury to the hawk, but they can be very disruptive to the hawk's plans for the day. Planning on going hunting, Mr. Hawk? Nope, you're getting mobbed by a bunch of small birds instead. Hoping to play some miniature golf? Nope, here comes that mob. How about a relaxing afternoon reading a book,

look in the shade of the old willow tree down by the creek. Nope, mob. A hawk faced with the wrath of a mob will often just give up and fly away, leaving the area. The small birds all make a victory cheer and they high-five each other. But perhaps the greatest enemy and rival of the red-tailed hawk is the great horned owl. Like our hawk, the Great Horned Owl is a widely distributed generalist predator. The two species, the hawk and the owl, share many habitats across North America. The owl also has a broad diet of small animals, and it usually hunts from a perch.

But, of course, it does most of its killing at night. Great horned owls don't make their own nests. they need to use nests made by other birds. And guess who makes a nest that's just perfect for a great-horned owl? That's right, the red-tail. The owls either find abandoned hawk nests or they take active nests over by force. So these two birds compete for food and for nests.

But that's not the extent of their hostile relationship. The great-horned owl will also kill and eat a red-tailed hawk. The owl is pretty much the only predator of the redtail. Now owls focus their attacks almost exclusively on nestling hawks. This happens at night, usually. Red tails are at a disadvantage at night, and even an adult hawk might occasionally fall victim to an owl. Two red tails.

haired-tailed hawks circle each other in flight, high above the ground. One is a male, the other female. They call to each other as they circle. Their yellow legs and feet, bristling with black talons, dangle beneath them. Suddenly, the male drops into a steep dive, but then he pulls up and ascends returning to the female. He repeats this dive maneuver several times. Then the male gently approaches the female and taps her with his feet. More circling and calling. Then the two hawks fly close together, twist and grab each other by the feet. They hang on as they plummet towards the ground together, spinning in the air as they go. But before they hit, they release each other and fly upward. This is the spectacular sky dance of the red-tailed hawk. It's a courtship display that lasts

about five to ten minutes. The sky dance helps the birds bond with each other before the nesting season begins. Budio Jamaicansis is a monogamous species. These hawks stay paired for life. Mates even stick together through the winter during the non-breeding season. Well, that's the case for those individuals that don't migrate anyway. The breeding season begins in late February through March. A pair of red tails, aggressive defend a territory in the breeding season. The territory is a three-dimensional area that includes airspace. On the ground, a territory is bounded and defined by features like forest edges, rivers, or even roads. Territory boundaries like this are generally stable

through time, from one year to the next, or even over decades. The size of a territory is between 0.5 and 2 square miles, or between 1.3 and 5.2 square kilometers. The local habitat and availability of food both influence the size of a territory. Resident birds may keep defending their territory all year. When those northern idiots arrive in the fall, the residents try to keep them out of their territories. When a red tail enters the airspace of a territory holding pair, the latter birds switch into beast mode. One or both of them will start screaming their iconic screams and fly toward the interloper.

Territorial displays can look to us human observers very much like the sky dance courtship display I described a moment ago. Talons bristling the territorial bird circles and chases the stranger. The two may interlock their feet and spin downward through the air. Anyway, a bonded pair of red tails eventually finds time to make a nest in the quiet moments between all the drama of their courtship and territorial behaviors. The nest is most often placed high in a tree near the top, where the birds can see for miles in all directions. Where trees are in short supply, hawks may choose to place their nest on a cliff or in a large

cactus or on the side of a building. A red-tail nest is a big pile of sticks, up to three feet across and six feet tall. That's one meter wide and two meters tall. The male and female share in the work of nest building. They often reuse a nest from previous years. At the beginning of the breeding season, they usually inspect several old nests. The pair often goes through the trouble of sprucing up two or more of these nests, adding fresh sticks, barks, and foliage. But eventually they settle on just one nest. And then it's egg-laying time. A typical clutch is two to three eggs. They're white with dark brown blotches and speckles. The female does the incubating while the male flies off to find food for her. Incubation lasts up to 35 days. A nestling hawk is called

an ias. That's spelled E-Y-A-S-S. This word is used for hawks of all kinds, not just red tails, as well as falcons. The mom hawk stays at the nest with her iases, and dad continues in his role as the provider of food. The female tears off small pieces of meat from prey animals to feed to the youngsters. Iases are vulnerable to being killed by other raptors, including that silent terror that comes in the night, the great horned owl. We better get back because it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night. Mostly. So mom and dad Redtail must be vigilant.

They do their best to defend the aeuses fiercely from outside attacks. If the parent hawks are successful in caring for and defending their babies, the youngsters hop out of the nest when they're about 45 days old. They stay close to home for a few days, however, as they get used to life outside the nest. Fledgling red-tailed hawks will stay with their parents for at least four months, but sometimes for up to six months. After that, though, they become fully independent and fly off to live their own lives. Each of these fresh young hawks has the potential to live a long life. But life in the wild is, of course, dangerous.

Even if we ignore the threat of great horned owls, we see that a young, inexperienced hawk can die from starvation, hypothermia, or disease. Run-ins with human contrivances like power lines, cars, windows, bullets, and poisoned meat can also spell death for a red tail. Data from some banding studies suggest that, over 50% of young red-tailed hawks die before they reach one-year-old. But if it can beat the odds, surviving through its first year, a young hawk will earn the right to bear the name of its species, because its pale-brown tail feathers will be replaced

by red feathers. A red tail might live 10 to 20 years in the wild, or even more. And that brings us to the tale of the red tail known as pale male. Pale male was, surprise, surprise, a male hawk with light-colored plumage. He arrived in Manhattan, New York in 1990. He set up residence near Central Park and got to work eating rats, gray squirrels, and feral pigeons. Pretty soon, pale male was a celebrity among the humans of New York. He had several mates over the following decades and raised as many as eight generations of chicks. There are several books and documentaries about Pale Mail. People seriously love this bird. Pale Mail has been capturing the hearts of New Yorkers and people across North America since

1990. But a few months ago, he was found sick and dying on the ground in Central Park. Wildlife Rehabilitators tried to save him, but unfortunately, Pale Mail died on May 6,000. At 33 years old, he was, amazingly, the oldest red-tailed hawk on record. It's sad that pale male died, of course, but overall his story is a lovely one. But as usual, there are some buzzkill-type people out there who want to ruin the magic. They claim that the bird found a few months ago was not pale male, but it was just a similar-looking bird. These people say that the real pale male probably died a decade or so ago. Pale male wasn't banded or marked in any way that would allow us to know for sure how long he lived.

Personally, I'd love to believe that he was the oldest red-tailed hawk ever known. In any case, Pale Mail was a great ambassador for nature in general and for his own species. Budio Jamaicanis is an awesome raptor, no matter what other names we use for it. Red tail, hawk of all trades, chicken hawk, or even cream-colored buzzard. I guess just don't call it a roadside hawk or a rufus-tailed hawk. Those names are already taken. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and learn some new things about North America, America's most familiar hawk.

This is a species I've loved since I was a kid, so I'm happy I got to make a lengthy podcast episode about it. I hope you get a chance to see one of these birds in the wild very soon. Thanks again to my supporters on Patreon for helping to choose this bird for the episode. If you are not already a patron and you're interested in participating in future polls, just a reminder that you can check out my Patreon page at Patreon. dot com slash science of birds. Thank you and welcome to my newest patrons.

Andrew Pcheslock, Josh Spurling, Corey N., Anne Isaac Matamana, Rebecca Meyer, Roberto and Julia, Alan Littman, and L.P. I deeply appreciate the support, so thanks again to all of you. I enjoy getting emails from my listeners, even though it sometimes takes me a long time

before I can respond. But yeah, if you have something you'd like to share with me, some deep thoughts you have about birds or the podcast, or maybe you'd like to hire me as the zoological realism consultant for your next big budget sci-fi movie called, I don't know, hawks in space or whatever. In any case, my email address is Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com. The show notes for this episode, which is number 79, can be found on the Science of Birds website. which again is scienceofbirds.com. I'm Ivan Philipson, and I hope you have a great day. Peace.