Red Shouldered Hawk

Buteo lineatus

What They Look Like

The Red Shouldered Hawk is about 17 inches tall and has a wingspan of 37-42 inches.  It has a cinnamon colored breast, reddish shoulders, and bright white spots on its dark wings.  There are two different color phases, the light phase has a light colored head and the dark phase has a dark head.  This is a dark phase.

  

Where They Live

In Michigan you can find Red Shouldered Hawks mostly in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula and they are uncommon throughout the rest of the state.  They live in swamps which are flooded forest areas where there are trees standing directly in water.  For nesting they require large tracts of undisturbed wetland and riparian habitat.

What They Eat

The reason that Red Shouldered Hawks live in these forested wetlands is that they eat other animals that live in wetlands.  This includes frogs, snakes, crayfish, and young water birds like geese and ducks.  The hawk will sit in a tree above the water, wait for one of these to come by, swoop down, and catch it.

Things to Know

The Red Shouldered Hawk is on the State Threatened list which means that if we are not careful they may become endangered.  The primary reason that they are threatened is because wetlands are being changed by human development.  Another thing that makes conservation of this species is also difficult because they are migratory.  Even if we protect their habitats here we cannot guarantee that the places that they go to for the winter will be kept safe for them.  What we can do to help them is to protect our forests and wetlands so that they will have a place to live, both here in Michigan and across the country.

Why We Have One

We got our Red Shouldered Hawk in December of 2001.  People found her as an injured fledgling and, thinking that she had been abandoned by her parents, raised her themselves.  She is partially imprinted to people and cannot be released into the wild.