The Spring Return of the Broad-winged Hawk

The hawk most seen in New England has to be the red-tailed hawk. These hawks are present year-round, and they have adapted to human habitation well. In the cold months, a few of our breeding pairs stay and guard their territories, but they still have to share the countryside with birds from farther north. In early spring, the northerners leave and give our nesting birds a little feeding room, which they need to feed the growing chicks.

A neighbor called the other day to report on a disaster for a pair that was nesting in a large tree within view of his house. There was a commotion in the night, and the next morning, egg shells were on the ground and the nest was a wreck. Raccoons probably were the raiders, but there are many mammals, as well as some birds, that eat eggs.

In winter, there is a red-tail hawk in even the smallest snow covered field or bare patch of grass where a rodent or rabbit may try to hide. There they sit in the open along the commuter highways in their brown suit with a black belt and red tail. It sounds like formal apparel, but the spiffy outfit more befits casual Friday.

The red-tailed hawk has increased since shooting them was banned, but at nesting time, it is still far outnumbered by another hawk in New England. This is a similar but smaller raptor called the broad-winged hawk. It is a woodland hawk, that stays well under cover of the canopy and rarely ventures out to be seen.

The broad-wing sits quietly on a lower branch of a tree and waits for the forest mice and chipmunks to appear beneath. Then it glides silently down to pounce and capture a precious meal. These birds build a nest in the fork of a tree, usually a yellow birch, and keep the number of rodents around the nest down to a healthy level.

We have had a plague of chipmunks the last few years, and one reason may be that there are fewer broad-winged hawks around, despite the continued growth of our wooded areas. They used to take their young high overhead every August in my neighborhood, circling and whistling their clear, long descending notes. The last few years, they have disappeared.

The new birds need plenty of flight time before the long autumn journey to Central and South America. The broad-winged hawk is a long-distance commuter, traveling thousands of miles to find a winter place in the dwindling forests of the tropics.

We have been looking for their return all during April, but the storms and clouds throughout the East have kept them from reaching us on time. A few arrived in mid-month with a window of sun and south winds, but the next clearing was April 24 with strong northwest winds.

The birds were coming low and close over the hill where we watch, just over a hundred of them in three hours. The next day there was a brisk northeast headwind, but it turned out to be perfect for them, as flocks of twenty or thirty hawks simply sailed slowly into the wind all day. By late afternoon we had counted over 700 broad-winged hawks.

An Allen Bird Club trip to the mountain two days later was a repeat of the first flight day with northwest winds and close looks at hawks slowed by the buffeting cross wind. On the way to the watch site, we passed an old orchard on a hilltop, and there was a single broad-winged hawk perched openly in an apple tree.

Some field guides show the back as brown, but most of them look like this bird, garbed in a svelte dark gray suit with a white shirt front sporting rusty red bars. No traveling salesman could have been more handsome or better dressed than this traveling bird.

We admired him briefly from inside the cars, but he quietly withdrew to hide in the bright shade of the still unleafed forest. That hawk was decked out for the serious work of spring courting and breeding. It was not a show for us, for such shy beauty is reserved for impressing a potential mate.