Red-tailed Hawk print

A still bird, and a watching one. Buteo jamaicensis sits perched, shoulders squared, head turned to scan the open ground below. The Audubon-style palette gives it warm browns and buff cream, the dark streaked belly band cutting across the pale breast, and the brick-red upper tail that names the species. It is the palette of a field at the edge of autumn. The pose is the one this hawk holds for hours at a time, elevated, patient, reading the grass.

The Red-tailed Hawk is the most numerous large hawk in North America. Cornell estimates the global population at two million or more, found from Alaska to Panama, across grassland, prairie, desert, forest edge, and city park. It requires two things: a structure from which to watch, and open ground beneath it. Given both, it occupies almost any landscape. The interstate highway system, with its elevated signs and mown roadside verges, has functioned as a continent-spanning extension of its preferred habitat.

The brick-red tail is unambiguous on any perched adult. Juveniles take their first year to grow into it, wearing a finely barred brown tail instead. The rasping, descending scream this bird produces has been used in film to represent every large bird of prey on screen, including the Bald Eagle, whose actual call is a high, thin chittering that sounds considerably less dramatic.

Rodents make up most of the diet in most seasons. The belly band may function as disruptive coloration during the stoop, breaking the hawk’s silhouette as it drops. That detail, still a working hypothesis, is the kind of thing this plate rewards thinking about.

A fine-art study in the tradition of Audubon.

Full field guide: /species/red-tailed-hawk/