Common name: RED SHOULDERED HAWK
Scientific name: Buteo lineatus
Identifying characteristics:
This medium sized hawk can be identified by the red shoulder patch, and rusty body and underwings. Its tail is heavily banded with white and cinnamon bands. Immature birds are brown streaked with less red on the shoulders
Range:
The Red Shouldered Hawk ranges through out most of eastern North America and into eastern Mexico, streaching to the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. There is also an isolated population on the west coast in Oregon going as far south as the Baja penisula.
Habitat:
The Red Shouldered Hawk is a bird of the wet lands, prefering to live along stream beds and in marshes, bogs, flood planes, and river bottoms in arid areas.
Nesting:
They nest mostly in deciduous trees along water courses where possible. The pair take several weeks to build the nest, often building a new one each year. If an old nest is used, then it will be heavily renovated. They lay 2-4 eggs.
Feeding habits:
Being a raptor of the wet lands the Red Shouldered Hawk feeds mostly on reptiles, anphibians, and crustaceans. In the winter it will feed on small mammals often competing with the red tailed hawk for food.
Conservation status:
The Red Shouldered Hawk's population in the eastern part of its range can be seen on a decline due to loss of habitat. In some areas it is on the threatened, and endangered list. However, in the western part of the range, thanks in part to irriagation of what was once desert land, it is expanding slowly.
