Look up on almost any clear day and there’s a good chance a red-tailed hawk is riding the thermals overhead.

Or a smaller Cooper’s hawk is slipping between backyard trees. Hawks have adapted well to suburban life, and their presence is one of the clearest signs of a functioning local food web.

What they look like

Red-tailed hawks are large, broad-winged birds, typically 19 to 25 inches long with a wingspan approaching four feet, best known for the rust-red tail visible from below in adults. Cooper’s hawks, a common backyard visitor, are smaller and built for speed and agility — short, rounded wings and a long tail suited to weaving through trees rather than soaring in open sky. Both show the strong hooked beak and sharp talons typical of raptors.

Family life

Hawks generally mate for life and return to the same territory, and often the same nest, year after year, adding new material each season. Red-tailed hawks typically lay one to three eggs in early spring, built high in a tall tree or, increasingly, on manmade structures like utility poles or building ledges. Incubation lasts about a month, and both parents share feeding duties once chicks hatch.

Young hawks fledge around six weeks old but stay dependent on their parents for several more weeks while learning to hunt. An awkward, still-spotted juvenile struggling with basic flight is normal development, not injury.

Daily habits

Hawks are diurnal, hunting during daylight hours, and diet varies by species. Red-tailed hawks are generalists that take squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, and other small mammals, while Cooper’s hawks specialise more heavily in birds, including the occasional visitor to a backyard feeder.

A hawk perched motionless for long stretches is typically watching and waiting — an efficient hunting strategy, not a sign of illness.

Territory and range

Red-tailed hawk territories can range from under a square mile in resource-rich areas to several square miles elsewhere, and pairs defend them actively against other hawks, especially during breeding season. Cooper’s hawks hold smaller, denser territories and have become notably more common in suburban and urban neighbourhoods in recent decades, drawn in part by the abundance of songbirds at backyard feeders.

Living alongside hawks

• Skip rodenticide bait. It’s the single biggest hidden threat to local hawks, working its way up the food chain from the rodents they hunt. See the red fox page for ways to reduce rodents without creating a secondary poisoning effect — and more humanely for the rodents.
• Feeder concerns are natural, not alarming. A Cooper’s hawk hunting near a feeder is behaving normally. Spacing feeders near cover so songbirds have an escape route is a more effective response than trying to deter the hawk.
• Leave awkward juveniles alone. A young hawk on the ground or low in a tree, still under parental care, usually just needs space and time, not intervention.
• Preserve tall, mature trees where possible. These remain preferred nesting sites even as the surrounding landscape develops.

A hawk overhead is a sign the local ecosystem still has room for a top predator — and one of the more visible reminders of how much wildness persists in a well-settled town.