Supplies List
Red-Shouldered Hawk
By Tom C.
Most people think "flying" is what defines a bird. Ostriches and penguins can't fly. The one positive way to identify a bird is its feathers. No other animals have feathers. Every single bird has feathers. This makes them unique from other animals. Most birds have three kinds of feathers - Contour feathers give the bird its shape and plumage. Flight feathers help them a lot to fly and their down feathers keep them warm. You may have seen cozy coats or comforters stuffed with down feathers. Birds molt or shed their feathers probably once a year. There's about 11,000 feathers on the mallard duck! Wow!
Hawks! I love hawks, especially one 
particular
one - the red-shouldered hawk. The color is phenomenal, which is (for an
adult red-shouldered hawk) a brown head, rusty red breast and under wing, a pale
tummy swarmed with red, flight feathers are pale below with dark stripes and a
dark hooded beak. This hawk is sixteen inches tall with a 40 inch
wingspan. The weight could be from 1.1 to 1.9 pounds. This hawk
mainly soars and the writer can't find beat. The sound is Eke-yaw!
Breeding habitat comes with bottom land, forests and wooded margins of marshes. Hawks that live in large areas with brutal winters migrate to toastier places for the winter. In some species of hawks, old and young birds all migrate. In other species, most of the immature hawks migrate, but the adults don't, and some take a breather at night. Large numbers of hawks or several species may occasionally be spotted where migration paths narrow along breezy mountain ranges, seacoasts and lakes.
The red-shouldered hawk's nest is made of twigs, inner bark strips, moss, dry leaves, conifer needles, sticks, and lichen and maybe lined with broken apart pellets of fur gagged up after its prey is eaten. The nest is built by both the male and the female. The amount of its eggs is 2-4 (usually 3). The color of the eggs are white or bluish -white, often stained by the nest, marked with brown. The eggs incubate for 28 days by both the male and female hawk.
The hawks prefer to eat, moles, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, shrews, muskrats, possums, skunks, small snakes, frogs, toads, small to medium birds, and most insects.
Now you can show off everything you know on the red-shouldered hawk........ You'll be thankful that I told you this.