The northern goshawk is the largest accipiter, a group of hawks with short, rounded wings and long tails. In Alaska, a typical female is about 65 cm (25 inches) long and weighs about 1,020 grams (2¼ pounds), and an average male is about 50 cm long and weighs about 880 grams (2 pounds). When a goshawk is perched, its short wings do not reach the middle of its tail. A goshawk's long tail and short, broad wings suit it for flying through thick forest, and its short wings let it speed up quickly. A Montana naturalist writes that the wings are not really suited for high speed, and that this design and the long tail are about maneuvering through dense woods. To pass through very tight spaces between branches, a goshawk will fold its wings back, which reduces its lift, and the bird makes up for this by fanning out its large tail.
A goshawk usually ambushes its prey, and if the prey runs, it quickly pursues. It hunts from tree perches by scanning the lower parts of the forest, the ground and the lower canopy, and its preferred perches are low, usually under 3 feet (1 meter), in bent-over trees or saplings. Wyoming researchers found that large trees let a hunting goshawk approach prey unseen, while a thin understory let it see prey. The Montana column says goshawks absorb a great deal of visual information at great distances and can process it instantly, and that they have more than one million light-sensing cells per square millimeter in the retina, while humans have about 200,000. 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. One source says a goshawk chasing prey can keep flying level at up to 40 miles per hour, and another says up to 40 kilometers per hour, but neither says how the speed was measured.
In north-central Arizona, a goshawk chased Abert's squirrels from branch to branch through a tree for 10 to 15 minutes, and another was seen chasing a snowshoe hare along a hedgerow for 45 to 60 minutes. Accipiters, however, often give up a chase after a short distance if the prey is not caught quickly. Scientists learn what a goshawk eats from the pellets and prey remains found near its favorite perches. In Wyoming, birds dominate the diet in the breeding season, while tree squirrels and rabbits make up most of the winter diet. In a study, goshawks chose forest nest stands with high canopy cover, large, tall trees and an open understory. In a two-season Arizona study, 20 adult goshawks chose foraging sites by forest structure, with higher canopy closure and more large trees, rather than by how many prey were there.
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), and in the western United States there are about 3.6 to 10.7 nesting pairs per 100 square kilometers. In Wyoming, a nesting goshawk's home range runs from 570 to 5,300 hectares, depending on local habitat, and radio-tracking in Arizona found that males had home ranges averaging 1,758 hectares. Comparing home range sizes across studies may not be meaningful because the studies calculate them in different ways. Because most nest searches are made in habitat already judged suitable, reported goshawk densities may not match the true number of territories. A goshawk is partly a migrant: an adult female banded on Hawk Ridge, Minnesota, on 30 September was recovered 1,860 km away in Louisiana on 30 November, an average daily flight distance of 31 km. Lighter wing loading in western goshawks than in eastern ones may be an adaptation for longer migratory movements.
Scientists describe ten weakly different goshawk subspecies, and because much of the variation is gradual, whether the subspecies are valid is debated. Goshawk trends are hard to judge: the birds are secretive and hard to survey, and Breeding Bird Survey and Christmas Bird Count trends are inconclusive because the species is seen so rarely on those surveys. In the Targhee National Forest in Idaho, goshawk territory occupancy fell from 64% to 31% between 1990-1994 and 1998-2002. In the UK, goshawks were all but gone as a breeding bird by the end of the 19th century, and the breeding population has since come back. Some managers in New England suspect numbers may be rising as forests grow back, but they lack definitive data. The US Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned in 1997 to protect the northern goshawk in the western United States and found in 1998 that protection was not warranted. As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the northern goshawk as Least Concern.
The effect of timber harvest on goshawks is much debated, and the debate centers mostly on the loss of mature forest, which is a major threat to goshawks as of November 2026. Many believe habitat change from timber harvest harms goshawks, but too little research across different harvest intensities exists to clearly show negative effects. Goshawks are treated as management indicators in many national forests, and their well-being can give clues to habitat change. Good goshawk hunting forest has space under the canopy for flight, many tree perches, and prey that can be found, and each nesting pair needs roughly 6,000 acres of forest to feed and raise its young. Goshawks keep a large breeding territory with several nest sites, so if one nest site is changed they may have other nearby options.
Words to know
- accipiter: forest hawk
- subspecies: regional type
- indicators: warning signs
- understory: space under trees
