Red-tailed Hawk
Buteo jamaicensis
Least Concern (IUCN Red List)Hawks, Eagles, and Kites
Call and song
Recording 1 · call
Recording 2
Recording 3
About the Red-tailed Hawk
Most common roadside raptor across much of North America. Often perches atop telephone poles, light posts, and edges of trees. Incredible variation in plumages, including less common dark morphs and various regional differences. Eastern adults have brilliant reddish-orange tail and pale underparts with obvious band of dark marks across belly. Western birds are typically darker. Immatures do not have a red tail.
Species account: eBird.org, fetched 2025-12-26 · How these pages are made
Where it has been recorded
Recorded in 35 of the 253 countries we have eBird lists for. Each opens that country's checklist.
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Bahamas
- Belgium
- Belize
- Bermuda
- Canada
- Caribbean Netherlands
- Cayman Islands
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Guadeloupe
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Italy
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Nicaragua
- Panama
- Puerto Rico
- Saint Barthélemy
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Martin (French part)
- Saint Pierre and Miquelon
- Sint Maarten
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Venezuela
- Virgin Islands (British)
- Virgin Islands (U.S.)
