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 often use fresh burns when searching for food because of increased prey visibility. A red-tailed hawk does most of its hunting from a perch, and red-tailed hawks are often seen perched on poles and signs beside roads. A red-tailed hawk scans the ground for food by soaring in wide circles or by perching on a tree or telephone pole. In Saskatchewan, fire suppression and tree planting produced a semiopen tree-grassland mosaic, which led to territory expansion and a population increase of red-tailed hawks, and a U.S. Forest Service review says red-tailed hawk populations have increased over much of their range because forests were broken into small woodlots with more woodland edge.

The Christmas Bird Count began on Christmas Day, 1900, and each of its circles counts as many birds as possible on one day. The data are compiled and used to learn about long-term bird trends, and as of November 2026, the count has thousands of bird circles across all 50 states and many other countries. Audubon's page for the red-tailed hawk uses more than a century of the data to chart how its relative abundance has shifted over time. As of November 2026, the red-tailed hawk has apparently increased in some areas since the 1960s, and its numbers are stable or still increasing, and as of October 2025, Montana's field guide says populations appear stable or increasing. In a model of Caribbean red-tailed hawks in eastern Puerto Rico, adult survival had the highest proportional effect on population growth, and nestling survival had the second greatest influence.

Seven subspecies of the red-tailed hawk are recognized in North America, according to a U.S. Forest Service review, while Animal Diversity Web says there are at least 14 subspecies of Buteo jamaicensis. Red-tailed hawk subspecies are separated by their color and by where they breed and spend the winter. Red-tailed hawks come in many colors, from nearly white to black, and many have a lighter belly with a dark band across it. A red-tailed hawk is named for the reddish color of its tail, and young red-tailed hawks do not get red tail feathers until the start of their second year. The red-tailed hawk gets its species name, jamaicensis, because the first ones scientists named were found in Jamaica. Female red-tailed hawks are often about 25 percent larger than males.

A red-tailed hawk has excellent eyesight, and its vision lets it detect the movements of prey at great distances; it can spot a mouse from 100 feet up in the air. Red-tailed hawks can see colors like most humans can, and also colors in the ultraviolet range. They are diurnal hunters, which means they are active during the day, but they see black and white well enough to also hunt at dusk. Red-tailed hawks also have a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, which they can close when perched to shield their eyes from wind. The National Park Service says raptors have unusually good eyesight, although it is difficult to determine how good, and estimates say a red-tailed hawk sees two to three times as sharply as a person, and some say as much as eight times.

Red-tailed hawks may mate for life, and a pair uses the same nest year after year. A female lays one to five eggs, and the eggs are kept warm for 28 to 35 days before they hatch. Both parents care for their chicks, and young red-tailed hawks leave the nest after 42 to 46 days, and a U.S. Forest Service review says the average longevity for a red-tailed hawk that survives to maturity is 6 to 7 years, and that red-tailed hawks are generally sexually mature at 2 years of age, while they usually begin breeding at about three years old. 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.

Red-tailed hawks live across North America and into Central America, in many kinds of places, including deserts, plains, woodlands and rain forests, but the figures for how much space a red-tailed hawk uses differ from one study 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 adult red-tailed hawks tend to keep the same territory for their whole life.

Words to know

• subspecies: a regional type
• nestling: young nest bird
• diurnal: active by day
• raptors: birds of prey
• nictitating: blinking
• mosaic: patchwork