Red-tailed hawks are active during the day and are built for soaring, and a red-tailed hawk has excellent eyesight, so its vision lets it detect the movements of prey at great distances. A red-tailed hawk does most of its hunting from a perch, and it scans the ground for food by soaring in wide circles or by perching on a tree or telephone pole. Red-tailed hawks like open land with high places to perch, and they are probably more efficient hunters in open areas than in areas with thick plant cover. Red-tailed hawks also have a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, which they can close when perched to shield their eyes from wind, and they are often seen perched on poles and signs beside roads, and in Puerto Rico's Luquillo Mountains, red-tailed hawks showed a preference for roadside habitats.

A red-tailed hawk dives down and grabs its food in its talons, which can be up to 1.33 inches long. Red-tailed hawks eat mostly small mammals, such as mice, and they also eat reptiles and other birds, although the share of mammals in the diet is different from place to place: in a U.S. Forest Service review, mammals made up 93 percent, 85 percent, and 40 percent of red-tailed hawk diets in Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Red-tailed hawks help keep the number of rodents and other small mammals in check. In courtship, a male red-tailed hawk might catch prey and pass it to a female in midair. While the female tends the young, the male hunts and brings food to the family, and the female feeds the nestlings small pieces of food.

Red-tailed hawks live across North America and into Central America, in many kinds of places, including deserts, plains, woodlands and rain forests, and the figures for how much space they use differ from one study and source to the next. In Puerto Rico's Luquillo Mountains, the home range of radio-marked red-tailed hawks averaged 5,022.6 hectares, with a range of 305 to 11,288 hectares. Animal Diversity Web gives home range sizes of 1.3 to 5.2 square kilometers and says red-tailed hawks defend territories of 0.85 to 3.9 square kilometers, and the San Diego Zoo says a territory can be as large as 9.6 square miles (25 square kilometers). Rural red-tailed hawks generally hold a territory of about two square miles, but urban birds nest within just a few blocks of each other, and red-tailed hawks have learned to nest in cities. In one area of southeastern New York and northern New Jersey, no red-tailed hawk nests were found near high-density suburban housing developments.

A red-tailed hawk is named for the reddish color of its tail, and red-tailed hawks come in many colors, from nearly white to black, but measurements of the red-tailed hawk are reported in different ways, and a red-tailed hawk has a wingspan of about 4 feet, and Montana lists a wingspan of 46 to 58 inches. A red-tailed hawk is 18 to 26 inches long, according to one source, while the length for females is 19 to 26 inches (48 to 66 centimeters) and for males 17 to 22 inches (43 to 56 centimeters), and Animal Diversity Web gives 48 to 65 centimeters. Female red-tailed hawks are often about 25 percent larger than males. One report says females weigh about 2 to 3 pounds (900 to 1,400 grams), and males about 1.5 to 2.9 pounds (690 to 1,300 grams), while another reports adult mass from 795 to 1224 grams, which varies by sex, season, and place. A newly hatched chick weighs only about 2 ounces.

Red-tailed hawks may mate for life, and both parents care for their chicks. A U.S. Forest Service review says red-tailed hawks are generally sexually mature at 2 years of age, while they usually begin breeding at about three years old, and that the average longevity for a red-tailed hawk that survives to maturity is 6 to 7 years. As of November 2026, the oldest known wild red-tailed hawk was at least 30 years and eight months old, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Red-tailed hawks migrate as individuals, and some established breeders, especially in the southern United States, stay on or near their territories all year. Birds that live in Canada and Alaska migrate as far south as Panama in winter and return to their home range as the weather warms. Adult red-tailed hawks tend to keep the same territory for their whole life.

Words to know

• hectares: land area units
• longevity: length of life
• migrate: travel seasonally
• nestlings: young nest birds
• nictitating: blinking