Raptors, the Sky Masters

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North America’s most widely distributed buteo is the red-tailed hawk, a large, stocky, barrel-chested bird with an appetite for almost anything, including rodents, rabbits, skunks, frogs, lizards, toads, turtles, spiders, cats and snakes. You can find one or another of 14 subspecies anywhere on the continent, from Central America north, nearly to the Arctic Circle.

Red-tailed hawks are given to perch-hunting. If you see a large, white-breasted hawk sitting on a utility pole, billboard, fence post or other large perch, it’s likely a red-tailed. (If the hawk is on a narrow wire or the ground, it’s probably not.)

Although most raptors hunt alone, Harris’s hawks hunt their prey cooperatively, much as wolves do, in family groups of about five. The birds will run a rabbit to exhaustion by pursuing it relay-style, with each bird taking a turn chasing. If the animal hunkers down in heavy brush, the hawks surround it and one or two attack on foot to flush it out.

Fast and Feisty: Falcons. Sporting long tails and swept-back wings, falcons are built for speed — and for quickly killing prey. A falcon’s deadliest weapon is its feet, which it can use open or closed. Clenching its toes into fists and delivering a battering-ram blow at dive speeds nearing 200 mph, a peregrine falcon can punch a bird as large as a great blue heron out of the sky. Opening its razor-sharp talons, a peregrine can slice a pigeon’s back to shreds in a single pass.

North America’s falcon species range from the stocky gyrfalcon (our continent’s largest falcon; a resident of Alaska and the Far North) to the robin-size American kestrel, a hovering cavity-nester and the most common and widespread U.S. falcon.

The peregrine falcon may be the world’s most widely distributed diurnal raptor, found on every continent except Antarctica. But in the United States, the use of DDT after World War II sent the peregrine population into a tailspin; in 1963 there were no nesting pairs in the eastern states. The ban of DDT in 1972 and ongoing captive-breeding programs have successfully restored the bird’s populations to sustaining levels. In 1999, the peregrine was removed from the Endangered Species list.

Flight Fantastic: Kites. Bobbing, swerving, hovering in the air, then suddenly diving, these slender, light-bodied raptors are known — and named — for their graceful aerial acrobatics. The Mississippi kite and the swallow-tailed kite sweep the Southeastern skies snatching grasshoppers, dragonflies and cicadas in midair. The gull-like white-tailed kite, which nests from Washington state to Southern California and along the Gulf Coast from Texas to central Florida, prefers rodents.

Our other two kites, the snail kite and the hook-billed, specialize in fresh escargot. The hook-billed, which ranges from the southern gulf to South America, resembles a parrot as it hops among branches searching for tree snails. Central Florida’s snail kite swoops over marshes and snatches fist-size apple snails from plant stems. Perched, it holds the snail fast with a foot and uses its deeply hooked bill like a can opener to cut through to the meat inside.

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