The Glory of a Red-shouldered Hawk
Late in the morning on another warm, balmy spring-like day, the front yard had fallen quiet and was almost empty when I headed out for a walk. I could hear only the peter-peter song of a Tufted Titmouse, the cawing of distant Crows, and an Eastern Phoebe singing from across the street. As I walked up the driveway and down the road under an open, soft-blue sky, swept with rumpled sheets of high white clouds, a Cardinal, a Bluebird and a House Finch sang; a Red-bellied Woodpecker called its spring-time quurrrr; and a scattered gathering of Robins, Dark-eyed Juncos and Red-winged Blackbirds fed in the grass of one large yard.
But all in all, the day seemed rather quiet, and my thoughts had begun to drift off to other things as I walked through a wooded section with trees on both sides of the road, when suddenly I heard – and felt – a close, explosive kee-yer! kee-yer! A Red-shouldered Hawk burst into view right above me, at no more than treetop level – breathtakingly colorful and clear. The sky behind it was blue with sunlight shining through the plumage so that almost every feather seemed to be visible, and all the markings were vividly clear – the ruddy red breast and well-defined reddish upper parts of the wings, the checkered black and white in the outer wings, and the black and white barring of the fanned-out tail. It circled quite low a couple of times, and I think I almost held my breath the whole time. It sailed away toward the north, staying just above the treetops. I could see it in the distance and still heard its calls as I walked on.
To see such a spectacular hawk so dramatically is to be reminded of the amazing beauty and wildness that still lives here around us, not somewhere distant and pristine, but right here, in these second-growth woods around our homes and towns. A Red-shouldered Hawk is a woodland hawk, dependent on the continued existence of large enough forested areas in which it can nest and hunt. Similar to the more familiar Red-tailed Hawk, but more colorful and less often seen, a Red-shouldered Hawk may soar on outspread wings in open skies and is one of the most vocal of hawks, especially at this time of the year, when pairs are mating and nesting – or weave swiftly and quietly through the trunks of trees in a woodland. It usually hunts from a perch in a tree in the woods, well camouflaged despite its size.