can i ask how you can tell it's a red-tailed hawk? i have a lot of trouble telling the difference between some of the the raptors in the area - we also have cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks and they all look alike to me.
Narrowing down hawks to genus (or similar taxonomic level) is a great first step.
Coops and Sharpies are
Accipiters - forest hawks that primarily hunt birds with a mad dash attack through forest canopies. Accipiters are built for agile dodging through the trees, with short, broad wings and long, narrow tails. They occasionally spread wings and soar in circles on rising columns of air (thermals), but usually you see them perched or swooping into your backyard in the hopes of catching a feeder bird off-guard. Both Coops and Sharpies are common in urban and rural areas in North America. They're tough to identify because their plumage is similar and they overlap in size. At the extremes though, they're pretty obvious: a male Sharpie is barely bigger than a Blue Jay, and the tip of its tail will look really squared off. A female Cooper's is about as big as a crow, and the tip of her tail is noticeably rounded. Regardless of size or sex, a Cooper's Hawk has a proportionately larger head than a Sharp-shinned (and just a bit of a crest).
Red-tailed Hawk is a
Buteo. Buteos often hunt by circling around in the sky and then diving on prey below, though that's hardly a universal hunting tactic for them. They are more likely to be seen over open country than Accipiters, but both Red-shouldered and Red-tailed hawks have been doing quite well in urban areas in recent years.
Buteos have long, broad wings and relatively short, squared off tails.
Your bird is an obvious redtail because . . .
1) You can see the very pale reddish tinge to the feathers photographed from below.
2) The leading edge of the wing close to the body (the "arm" as opposed to the "hand") is called the "patagium". Redtails almost always have a dark patch on the patagium, and those patches show up very well on the wings of the bird you photographed.
Great photos - keep having fun!
~The Shrike
