Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson XXVI · Topic 2: Bird study: birds to know
26. The red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks
Goal: Your child can describe how a big hawk soars and hunts, tell a hawk from a crow in flight, and explain how hawks help farmers by eating mice.
You'll need
- Binoculars
- An open place with a wide view of sky: a field edge, highway rest stop or hilltop
- A bird book or app with hawk pictures and calls
- Nature notebook
What's in the book
The leading thought, the method (begin with watching a hawk's flight, then talk with hunters and read) and fourteen questions about soaring, telling hawks from crows, how a hawk hunts and sees, its perch, feet and beak, why people shot hawks, its food, nest, mate and cry, how to tell the two species apart, and the eagle.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
All year. Red-tailed hawks are common across North America; look for one perched on a pole or tree along a highway, or circling over fields on a sunny day. Red-shouldered hawks prefer wet woods. Fall migration (September and October) brings many hawks over ridges.
Keep the big idea in mind
Read this to yourself:
The ordinary large reddish "hen-hawks," which circle high above meadows, are doing great good to the farmer by feeding upon the mice and other creatures which steal his grain and girdle his trees.
In Comstock's day many people shot every hawk. Today all hawks are protected by law.
Watch it soar
How can you tell a hawk, when flying, from a crow or other large bird? Describe how it soars?
How often does it make strokes with its wings?
Count wingbeats: a crow flaps steadily; a soaring red-tail hardly flaps at all.
The hunter
Have you noticed a hawk when soaring drop suddenly to earth? If so, why did it do this?
How does a hawk hunt? How can it see a mouse in a meadow when it is so high in the air that it looks like a circling speck in the sky?
Feet and beak
Do hawks seize their prey with their claws or their beaks? What sort of feet and claws has the hawk? Describe the beak?
Use a picture if the hawk is too far off.
Tell them apart
Describe the colors of the hen hawks and describe how you can tell the two species apart by the colors and markings of the tail.
The adult red-tail has a brick-red tail. The red-shouldered hawk has a black tail with narrow white bands and reddish shoulders and breast.
What is the cry of the hawk?
The red-tail's cry is a hoarse scream; listen to both on a bird app.
Put it into words
Ask your child why a farmer might be glad to have a red-tailed hawk nearby. Then share the leading thought.
Nature notebook
Draw a hawk soaring, seen from below, with its wings spread wide and tail fanned. Color the tail to show which kind it was.
Afterwards
On car trips, count the hawks perched on poles and fence posts along the road.
Tip
Comstock's question 7 asks why people shot hawks. Use it to talk about how laws changed once people learned what hawks eat.