Redtail Hawk

The REDTAIL HAWK'S shrill kee-er-r-r attracts our attention to its circling flight over the rocky hillsides of its favorite haunts. It is a slow-moving species. Frequently it is seen perched on a tree look-out where it watches for the small quadrupeds — especially mice, its principal food.

Altho known thruout the country as "Henhawk," the Redtail very seldom raids the chicken yard. Where mice, squirrels and their kind are plentiful it never does so. A divergence from this fact by an individual who has acquired the poultry taste may warrant that particular bird's destruction but personally I would rather let these Hawks have a chicken or two for their services in keeping down the mouse and rat population. In four years of chicken farming this toll has not been required altho many pairs nest and live around my farm. One day an investigation of shrill squeals from a tall chestnut revealed three Redtails quarreling over a young woodchuck — so fiercely that I walked directly beneath the fighting trio before they took alarm and fled, letting the object of the fracas drop to the ground.