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 are built for soaring, and they are often seen perched on poles and signs beside roads. A red-tailed hawk dives down and grabs its food in its talons. Red-tailed hawks are diurnal hunters, which means they are active during the day, but they see black and white well enough to also hunt at dusk. They eat mostly small mammals, such as mice, and they also eat reptiles and other birds, and they help keep the number of rodents and other small mammals in check.

A red-tailed hawk has excellent eyesight, and its vision lets it detect the movements of prey at great distances, so that 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 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 live across North America and into Central America, in many kinds of places, including deserts, plains, woodlands and rain forests. They like open land with high places to perch. The range of the red-tailed hawk has grown over the last 100 years, and red-tailed hawks have learned to nest in cities. Red-tailed hawks from the far north fly south for the winter, while many others stay in one place all year. Because some red-tailed hawks stay all year and others come south, red-tailed hawks become even more abundant in winter in many parts of the country.

The figures for how much space red-tailed hawks use are not the same from source to source, and adult red-tailed hawks tend to keep the same territory for their whole life. Animal Diversity Web says red-tailed hawks defend territories that range in size from 0.85 to 3.9 square kilometers, while 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.

Red-tailed hawks may mate for life, and a pair of red-tailed hawks 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. Red-tailed hawks 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.

Words to know

• territory: claimed space
• ultraviolet: light we miss
• diurnal: active by day
• raptors: birds of prey
• abundant: plentiful
• nictitating: blinking