A goshawk is a large hawk with short, rounded wings and a long tail. In north-central Arizona, a goshawk chased Abert's squirrels from branch to branch through a tree for 10 to 15 minutes. Elsewhere, a goshawk was seen chasing a snowshoe hare along a hedgerow for 45 to 60 minutes. One wildlife education page says a goshawk may chase prey for up to 30 minutes, yet accipiters often give up a chase after a short distance if the prey is not caught quickly. Two measured dives by a goshawk at another bird reached 23.9 and 24.2 meters per second, according to a 1987 study cited in the Birds of North America account.
The Montana column says goshawks absorb a great deal of visual information at great distances and can process it instantly. It also says they have more than one million light-sensing cells per square millimeter in the retina, while humans have about 200,000. A goshawk hunts from tree perches by scanning the lower parts of the forest, the ground and the lower canopy, and an open understory, the open space under the trees, helps it spot prey. Its preferred perches are low, usually under 3 feet (1 meter), in bent-over trees or saplings.
A goshawk is partly a migrant: some travel far in winter, and others move only a short way to lower ground. An adult female banded on Hawk Ridge, Minnesota, on 30 September was recovered 1,860 km away in Louisiana on 30 November. The trip needed an average daily flight distance of 31 km. Radio-tracking in Arizona found that male goshawks had home ranges averaging 1,758 hectares.
In Wyoming, birds dominate the goshawk's diet in the breeding season, while tree squirrels and rabbits make up most of the winter diet. Nine of 12 radio-telemetry studies in the western United States found that goshawks selected stands with higher canopy closure, larger trees and more large trees than random stands. Goshawk nests are spread out: the mean distance between nearest neighbors ranges from 1.9 to 3.5 miles (3.0 to 5.6 km).
Words to know
- hectares: land measure
- migrant: traveling bird
- telemetry: tracking by radio
