Hawks and Raptors in Your Neighborhood: How to Tell Them Apart

Raptors Are Everywhere — Even in Cities

You do not need to visit mountains or wilderness to see hawks. Red-tailed Hawks perch on highway light poles. Cooper's Hawks hunt backyard bird feeders in suburban neighborhoods. American Kestrels hover over highway medians. Peregrine Falcons nest on downtown skyscrapers. Once you start looking up, you realize raptors are a daily part of the landscape you have been walking through all along.

The Five Raptors You Will See Most Often

1. Red-tailed Hawk

The most common hawk in North America and your best starting point. Large and stocky, it soars on broad wings held flat in wide circles. Adults have a distinctive rusty-red tail visible from below when they bank in flight. You will find them perched on telephone poles, fence posts, and dead trees along roadsides scanning for rodents.

Key field mark: A dark band of streaks across the belly, forming a "belly band" visible from below in flight. This separates Red-tailed Hawks from most other soaring raptors at a distance.

2. Cooper's Hawk

The bird feeder hawk. If a hawk has ever exploded into your yard at high speed and grabbed a songbird off your feeder, it was almost certainly a Cooper's Hawk. Medium-sized with a long, rounded tail and short, rounded wings built for speed through dense cover. Adults have blue-gray backs and rusty-barred breasts. Juveniles are brown-streaked and easily confused with their smaller cousin, the Sharp-shinned Hawk.

3. Sharp-shinned Hawk

Nearly identical to Cooper's Hawk but smaller — roughly jay-sized versus crow-sized. The tail tip is more squared off (Cooper's tail is more rounded). In flight, Sharp-shinned Hawks have a proportionally smaller head that barely projects beyond the leading edge of the wings, while a Cooper's Hawk's head projects noticeably.

Cooper's vs Sharp-shinned is one of the hardest identifications in North American birding. Do not feel discouraged if you cannot tell them apart immediately — experienced birders sometimes cannot either. Focus on size impression and head projection.

4. American Kestrel

North America's smallest falcon. About the size of a robin but with a fierce predatory spirit. Males are strikingly colorful: blue-gray wings, rusty back and tail, and bold facial markings. They hunt from exposed perches or hover in place over open fields, scanning for grasshoppers and mice. Kestrels are declining in many areas, making every sighting special.

5. Turkey Vulture

Not technically a hawk, but the large dark bird soaring overhead that most people mistake for one. Turkey Vultures hold their wings in a shallow V-shape (dihedral) and rock unsteadily from side to side — hawks hold their wings flat and soar steadily. Up close, the featherless red head is distinctive. They locate carrion by smell, a rare ability among birds.

Soaring Raptors: Reading the Sky

Species	Wing Shape	Flight Style	Size
Red-tailed Hawk	Broad, rounded, held flat	Steady circles on thermals	Large (crow to eagle)
Red-shouldered Hawk	Broad with translucent crescents near wingtips	Soars less, flaps more	Medium
Turkey Vulture	Long, held in V-shape	Wobbly, teetering side to side	Large (wingspan 6 feet)
Bald Eagle	Very broad, held flat like a plank	Powerful, steady soaring	Very large (wingspan 7 feet)
Osprey	Long, narrow, crooked at the wrist	Hovers over water, dives feet-first	Large

When a Hawk Visits Your Feeder

A Cooper's Hawk hunting your bird feeder is not a disaster — it is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Predators follow prey, and a feeder full of songbirds is an irresistible buffet for an accipiter. If the hawk's visits disturb you, take your feeders down for a week or two. The hawk will move on, and the songbirds will return when you rehang the feeders.

Never harm, trap, or harass a hawk at your feeder. All raptors are protected under federal law (the Migratory Bird Treaty Act). The penalty for killing a hawk can include substantial fines and imprisonment.

Test your raptor identification skills with our Bird Identifier Quiz and track raptor migration through your area with the Migration Tracker.