Red-Tailed Hawk
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40 free Red-Tailed Hawk trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The red-tailed hawk is the raptor most North Americans have seen without knowing its name: the stocky shape circling over a field or perched on a roadside pole. It is also a bird most people have heard, because its cry turns up in films far more often than the hawk itself. This quiz collects the fun facts behind that familiar silhouette. Questions cover what the hawk eats and how it hunts, its courtship and nesting, the neighbours that rob or harass it, its autumn journeys, and the famous individuals that made homes among skyscrapers. It suits birdwatchers, students, and anybody who has looked up at a hawk and wondered what it was doing. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
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Q 01Film sound editors often dub the red-tailed hawk's fierce scream over footage of which far more famous bird?
Bald eagle
Bald eagle calls are weak, gull-like chirps, so film and television swap in the hawk's louder, more powerful cry.
Q 02Americans have long nicknamed the red-tailed hawk after which farmyard bird, though it rarely preys on the adults?
Chicken
Chicken hawk is a label shared with Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks, and it once got all three shot as pests. Red-tails mostly hunt mammals.
Q 03The red-tailed hawk Pale Male became a celebrity by nesting on an apartment building beside which New York landmark?
Central Park
Central Park birdwatchers set up telescopes each spring to watch his chicks. He was among the first red-tails known to nest on a building instead of a tree.
Q 04Which group of small mammals can make up as much as 85 percent of a red-tailed hawk's diet?
Rodents
Rodents such as mice, voles, gophers and chipmunks are the hawk's staple, which makes it free pest control for farmers.
Q 05Which night hunter, unable to build a nest of its own, often takes over old red-tailed hawk nests?
Great horned owl
Great horned owl pairs start nesting as early as December, so they claim a nest before the hawks are ready. The hawks simply build a new one nearby.
Q 06In Europe, close relatives of the red-tailed hawk go by which common name instead of hawk?
Buzzards
Buzzards is the Old World name for these broad-winged soaring hawks, while many Americans use the same word for vultures.
Q 07Red-tailed hawk pairs sometimes hunt as a team, guarding opposite sides of a tree to trap which animals?
Squirrels
Squirrels flushed by one hawk are almost inevitably driven straight to its partner waiting on the far side of the trunk.
Q 08City red-tailed hawks are often sickened or killed after eating prey that has swallowed which household product?
Rat poison
Rat poison causes internal bleeding in the mice that eat the bait, and a hawk that swallows them is dosed in turn.
Q 09Which noisy backyard songbird sometimes imitates the red-tailed hawk's call, perhaps to scare rivals away from food?
Blue jay
Blue jay impressions of red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks may also be a way of testing whether a real raptor is lurking nearby.
Q 10The red-tailed hawk's scientific name honours which Caribbean island, home of the first specimen described?
Jamaica
Jamaica supplied the bird that naturalist John Latham wrote up in 1781, which is why a hawk found across North America is called Buteo jamaicensis.
Q 11Which sitcom star joined street protests after her Manhattan building removed the nest of red-tailed hawk Pale Male?
Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore lived in the co-op whose board took the nest away in 2004. After an international outcry, the building installed a new cradle for it within weeks.
Q 12Which birds drove the young red-tailed hawk Pale Male out of his first tree nest in Manhattan?
Crows
Crows drove him from the tree in 1991, when he was a first-year bird. Several crows working together can also push a red-tailed hawk off a carcass.
Q 13Which eye colour marks a red-tailed hawk as a youngster, before the irises darken over three or four years?
Yellow
Q 21The red-tailed hawk breeds from Alaska and northern Canada as far south as which Central American country?
Panama
Panama marks the southern limit, home to a dark resident subspecies with cinnamon flanks that stays put all year.
Q 22Unlike broad-winged hawks, how do migrating red-tailed hawks usually pass a hawk watch?
One by one
One by one is the rule, and only on days when the winds suit them. Even so, a single spring day at Derby Hill in New York has logged more than 5,000.
Q 23Up to 15,000 red-tailed hawks have been counted in a single autumn passing Hawk Ridge in which Minnesota city?
Duluth
Duluth sits where southbound raptors, unwilling to cross open water, follow the shore and funnel over the ridge. About 20,000 birdwatchers come each year.
Yellow irises are how hawk watchers knew a mate of New York's Pale Male was only in her second year. With maturity the eyes slowly turn a deep reddish shade.
Q 14During red-tailed hawk courtship flights, the male sometimes briefly locks which body part with his mate in midair?
Talons
Talons meet for a moment after the male has repeated a steep dive and climb several times. The whole aerial display can last ten minutes or more.
Q 15Red-tailed hawk pairs defend the same territory for years and usually take a new partner only when what happens?
One mate dies
One mate dies, and only then does the survivor look for another. New York's famous Pale Male was seen with eight mates over three decades.
Q 16Which century-old US law makes it illegal to pick up and keep a red-tailed hawk feather?
Migratory Bird Treaty Act
Migratory Bird Treaty Act protection covers dead birds, feathers, eggs and nests as well as living hawks, so even a moulted feather must stay where it fell.
Q 17Red-tailed hawks sometimes kill western diamondbacks, heavier than the hawk and part of which venomous snake group?
Rattlesnakes
Rattlesnakes of this size easily surpass the weight of most red-tails, yet the hawks take them anyway, along with full-grown jackrabbits.
Q 18Red-tailed hawks have been observed following which stocky digging mammals to capture the prey they flush out?
Badgers
Badgers send small animals bolting into the open as they dig, and the hawk and the digger are considered potential competitors for the same meal.
Q 19The red-tailed hawk's hoarse, rasping cry, lasting two to three seconds, is often likened to which industrial sound?
Steam whistle
Steam whistle is the classic comparison for a cry that starts high and slurs downward. The hawk screams loudest when a rival enters its territory.
Q 20Which raptor is the only one in North America that uses a wider range of habitats than the red-tailed hawk?
Peregrine falcon
Peregrine falcon alone beats the red-tail, which is at home in deserts, grasslands, mountains, tropical rainforests, farm fields and city centres.
Q 24A soaring red-tailed hawk often holds its wings in a shallow V, a posture known by which geometry term?
Dihedral
Dihedral soaring lets the hawk stay aloft while flapping as little as possible to save energy. Its active flight is slow, with deep wing beats.
Q 25Which group-hunting raptor of the American Southwest is the only bird of prey rated more sociable than the red-tail?
Harris's hawk
Harris's hawk outranks it for sociability, but trainers still prize red-tails as tameable, long-lived and highly resistant to disease.
Q 26The famous New York red-tailed hawk Pale Male was named for the unusually light colouring of which body part?
Head
Head feathers far lighter than usual led birdwatcher and author Marie Winn to coin the name. He was said to be 33 when he died in 2023, a remarkable age for a wild hawk.
Q 27Which blackish red-tail, a raptor subspecies breeding in Alaska and the Yukon, is sometimes ranked as a full species?
Harlan's hawk
Harlan's hawk lacks the warm tones of other red-tails, and an experienced watcher can pick it out nearly every time. Its tail is typically not red at all.
Q 28What covers newly hatched red-tailed hawk chicks before their flight feathers begin to grow in?
White down
White down keeps the helpless chicks fluffy while a parent broods them. They grow fast, and at around 42 days old they are ready for a first flight.
Q 29Red-tailed hawks sometimes harass another hunter until it drops its catch, a tactic known by which name?
Pirating
Pirating saves the hawk the work of a hunt, but bigger raptors such as ferruginous hawks turn the same trick on red-tails.
Q 30As in most birds of prey, which red-tailed hawks are the bigger ones, up to a quarter larger?
Females
Females are up to 25 percent larger than males, weighing as much as 2,000 g against a top weight of about 1,300 g for their mates.