Hawks are magnificent birds of prey, admired across many cultures, where their sighting can be seen as a good omen. These skilled hunters possess exceptional eyesight and powerful talons, essential tools for their carnivorous lifestyle. Their diet is diverse, varying based on species, habitat, and seasonal changes.
General Hawk Diet
Hawks are carnivores, and their diet primarily consists of other animals. Hawks that are located in a city environment will have a diet that consists of other birds as well as small animals. Hawks feed on rodents, rabbits, lizards, snakes, fish, and even bats. If the opportunity presents itself, a large hungry hawk will even carry off smaller livestock like small lambs and baby goats. The exact amount of food a hawk needs to make it through the day depends on the time of year and the weather conditions. In order to survive the frigid northern winters, hawks must generate additional body heat. More heat means more food. Their food consumption drops during the summer, which is good news for the hawks since they like to look fit and trim for the beach.
Dietary Needs of Young Hawks
Just like adult hawks are carnivores, so are their offspring. A baby hawk’s diet consists mainly of insects, lizards, catfish, carp, and other crustaceans. If you find an abandoned baby hawk, it is imperative that you don’t feed it bread and milk, but rather small pieces of meat followed by a few drops of water.
Hunting Techniques and Physical Adaptations
Hawks have taloned feet that are designed for capturing and securing prey, and this is quite common amongst most birds of prey. Hawks are famous for their eyesight, and it is a well-documented fact that hawks have excellent eyesight. With 20/20 vision that is eight times more acute than humans, hawks really do have incredible eyesight.
Accipiters: Woodlands Hawks
Also known as woodlands hawks, the Accipiter has wings that are short and rounded. Accipiters are excellent hunters of aerial and ground animals and have been designed to swoop acrobatically and at high speeds through dense forest.
Read also: Galapagos Hawk Feeding Habits
Cooper's Hawk
Cooper’s hawks fall into this category, with their primary hunting style being stealth and speed. The Cooper's Hawk is a crow-sized raptor that breeds in deciduous and mixed-deciduous forests throughout the United States, southern Canada, and Mexico north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Across this broad distribution, which is expanding both northward and southward, it is generally an inconspicuous species. However, since the 1970s, Cooper's Hawk has colonized suburban and urban landscapes, such that it is likely the most common backyard breeding raptor across North America. It is also a common bird of passage at migration watch sites, locations where raptors concentrate during migration. The best viewing time is during Spring when the Cooper’s Hawks are hunting to feed their offspring.
The female Cooper's Hawk is about one-third larger than the male, showing among the greatest reversed size dimorphism of the world's Accipitridae. Vocalizations, especially by the female, may be an important element of the pair bond in this highly dimorphic species. The Cooper's Hawk breeds in extensive areas of forest as well as in smaller woodlots, pine plantations, and suburban and urban woodlands of towns and cities of all sizes. The species nests at high densities in the small, wooded tracts in the grasslands of the Northern Great Plains. Some eastern populations declined significantly in the mid-1900s, owing to shooting, trapping, and pesticide contamination. Since the 1990s, there have been concerted efforts to document habitat use in various parts of the species' range, with some emphasis on differences in the quality of nesting habitat (indexed by density and productivity) in natural versus human-altered landscapes (e.g., suburbia, plantations). Detailed information on nest-site use and selection is available for New Jersey and New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota. The species was named in 1828 by Charles Bonaparte (American Ornithology) for his friend and fellow ornithologist, William C. Cooper, a New York scientist and father of James.
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Sharp-shinned Hawks are the smallest of all recipients in North America and have the highest percentage of their diet being made up of songbirds. Songbirds make up almost one hundred percent of their diet. Songbirds are huge fans of bird feeders, and the populations become concentrated in the winter. This makes them easy targets for the Sharp-shinned Hawk. They tend to target smaller birds and are opposed to hunting larger birds like quail, doves, or robins.
Northern Goshawk
Of the entire accipiter family, the Northern Goshawk is the largest North American member. Occupying Canada and the Northern United States, as the name suggests, it is primarily a Northern hawk. There is also a European species of the Northern Goshawk found in other parts of the world. They perch on trees or moderate slopes and live at mid-high elevations. Prey that has been caught is taken to the perch to be eaten.
Buteos: Open Landscape Hunters
Seen soaring high above open landscapes where they can see long distances, Buteos tend not to live too deep in the forest. In comparison to accipiters, they are not as fast and are less aerodynamic.
Read also: The Hoxsey Diet
Red-tailed Hawk
The Red-tailed Hawk’s primary source of food is small land mammals like rabbits and mice. Red-tailed Hawks prefer sparsely populated forests to hunt, with the occasional tree to perch and make a nest. On occasion, they will also sometimes consume other birds, insects, and various types of reptiles. They are extremely skilled hunters, and their broad wings soften the sounds of flapping. Red-tailed Hawks can make a nice lunch out of: worms, crickets, snakes, lizards, bats, birds, mice, squirrels or rabbits. Varied, includes small mammals, birds, and reptiles. The Red-tailed Hawk diet varies with location and season. Mammals such as voles, rats, rabbits, and ground squirrels are often major prey; they also eat many birds (up to the size of a pheasant) and reptiles, especially snakes. Sometimes eats bats, frogs, toads, insects, various other creatures; may feed on carrion.
The female Red-tailed Hawk remains with young most of the time during first few weeks. Male brings most food, and female tears it into small pieces to feed to the young. After about 4-5 weeks, food is dropped in nest, and young feed on it themselves. Young leave the nest about 6-7 weeks after hatching, but not capable of strong flight for another 2 weeks or more. Fledglings may remain with parents for several more weeks. The Red-tailed Hawk does most of its hunting by watching from a high perch, then swooping down to capture prey in its talons. Also hunts by flying over fields, watching for prey below. Small prey is carried to a perch, and large prey is often partly eaten on the ground.
In courtship, male and female Red-tailed Hawks soar in high circles, with shrill cries. Males may fly high and then dive repeatedly in spectacular maneuvers; they may catch prey and pass it to the female in flight. Nest site is variable. Usually in a tree, up to 120 ft above ground; nest tree often taller than surrounding trees. Also nests on cliff ledges, among arms of giant cactus, or on artificial structures such as towers or buildings. Nest (built by both sexes) is a bulky bowl of sticks, lined with finer materials, often with leafy green branches added. 2-3, sometimes 4, rarely 1-5. Whitish, blotched with brown. Incubation is by both parents, 28-35 days.
Rough-legged Hawk
Rough-legged hawks are found in the Arctic circle and primarily hunt on the tundra. They have the ability to hunt on the ground or in the air, depending on the type of prey they are targeting. The Rough-legged Hawk’s diet is based on its mating season, similar to the Swainson Hawk. In mating season, Lemmings are the prey-of-choice.
Swainson’s Hawk
Swainson’s Hawks are especially well-known to cater their diets to the season. However, when mating season is over, Swainson’s Hawks frequently switch over to insects like grasshoppers or dragonflies, which are more common to find during the summer heat.
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Red-shouldered Hawk: The Opportunist
Red-shouldered Hawks are opportunists. They embody “opportunity” whether it’s using a new food source or eating bugs. One example is of a red-shoulder making off with meat put out for Marabou Storks at the Washington D.C. Zoo. There are also parks in Florida that have red-shoulders who have figured out how to grab chicken pieces off of grills as an easy food source. One person even had her own Red-shouldered Hawk feeder and would put out a chicken thigh a day (or sometimes a frog) on a wooden tray feeder and the hawk would immediately come down and take the food.
Eating Frequency and Food Storage
For the most part, raptors don’t need to eat as often as the smaller birds do. One good meal may be enough for an entire day, or even longer. Obviously, there is more meat on a squirrel than there is on a mouse. A hawk has to catch and eat several mice if it wants to be full.
During the breeding season, if a parent hawk catches a rabbit, or some other large prey, it simply shares the catch with the family. However, after the fledglings have moved away an adult hawk will have no one to share a freshly caught rabbit. Not wanting to waste the delicious bunny the bird will eat as much as it can until its stomach is filled and there’s no more room. This is when the hawk switches to plan B.
Many birds hide or cache extra food for later, when the midnight munchies strike. But red-tails usually don’t hide surplus food. Instead, they stuff extra food into their crop. The crop is a weird little storage room that’s just off the esophagus, between the mouth and stomach. It’s like having a built-in doggie bag. Extra food is swallowed and stored in the crop until the stomach is able to make room for it.
Leisure Activities
If a hawk isn’t hunting, it probably does what we do when we have extra time - nothing. When birds aren’t feeding, roosting, mating or migrating, they do what is referred to as “loafing.” They basically rest, digest their food, do a bit of preening and wonder why the kids don’t call.