Hawk Season

After the most recent snowstorm I was restless. Even though we had been plowed and shoveled I didn't know where I wanted to go to walk, concerned about slipping and falling. It is a terrible thing when you are so concerned about something like that because you will never go anywhere in winter. Still, I strayed no further than the top of my driveway.

As I listened for what birds might be around in the late afternoon a red-tailed (or redtail) hawk flew overhead. I had no sooner noted that when a second one flew over, heading in the same direction as the first one, towards the woods near the brook and my town's community garden. 

Red-tail hawk (Margo D. Beller)

I'd seen a pair of red-tails a few weeks earlier flying in the same direction in the late afternoon. They didn't fight each other so I wondered if this was a pair flying to a nest, or at the very least to a safe roosting spot to spend the night.

Now I'd seen what was likely the same pair heading to whatever tree they had picked to roost and perhaps build a nest.

According to the bird people at Cornell, red-tails build their nests at the top of tall trees to have a better view of the mammalian pickings below. They will also nest on cliffs and, as the late Marie Winn detailed in her classic "Red-tails in Love," on the window ledges of tall buildings. 

Neither of these birds is as light in color as Pale Male, the protagonist of that book. In fact, they looked more in color like Harold and Maud, the red-tailed hawks I was tracking when I worked in Bergen County. N.J., in 2012.

I had been standing in a parking lot near my office when I noticed a red-tail with nesting materials in its talons flying back and forth to a particular tree. The next day I brought my binoculars and my camera to work so I could see more closely. That's when I saw the second red-tail, whose photo is above. I called them Harold and Maud after the movie characters.

Maud on the nest, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I wrote about that nest on April 1, which means I watched the nest building during March. According to the site Wild Bird Watching, these monogamous raptors' mating season runs from late winter to early spring. In courtship, the two circle in the air and clasp talons, a thrilling thing to see. Then the nesting begins.

Unfortunately, my time at that job ended in early May so I don't know if any of the eggs Maud was incubating hatched and how many young there were. Cornell says red-tails have only one brood of anywhere from one to five eggs. The parents are ruthless in defending their territories and picking off squirrels and other mammals - their preferred food though they'll also eat birds - to feed their young.

Red-tails are of low conservation concern, which means there are a lot of them and likely to stay that way. 

A red-tail in the area of the community garden as
seen from my home in February 2025.
(Margo D. Beller)

I hope these two red-tails are successful with their nest, wherever it is. Perhaps when the snow finally melts I'll go looking for it. If I'm lucky maybe they'll show me where it is.