Woodland Hawks in Southeastern Pennsylvania

     A few kinds of hawks in southeastern Pennsylvania, including red-tails, American kestrel's and Cooper's, have adapted to living and nesting in farmland, and older suburban areas with their many tall trees.  But other kinds of hawks, including goshawks, broad-wings and red-shoulders, still winter or nest in this area's woodlands.
     I have been thrilled to see two wintering goshawks so far in my lifetime.  Both birds were flying low and fast, with quick, powerful wingbeats through maturing forests in southeastern Pennsylvania.  They do that to surprise, flush up and catch a variety of woodland birds and mammals, including ruffed grouse, blue jays and squirrels. 
     Goshawks are exciting to see hunting in the woods.  But they are only in this part of Pennsylvania during winter, and not every winter at that.  They only migrate south when food is scarce in northern forests where they raise young.
     Goshawk pairs nest high in trees in the northern, mixed forests of Eurasia and North America.  In America, they hatch young across Alaska and Canada, in New England, down the Rocky Mountains and down the Appalachians to Maryland.  They fiercely protect their young from all comers.
     Goshawks are large, heavy birds that are bigger than crows.  Adults are gray on top and finely-barred gray below.  The young, however, are brown above and brown-flecked underneath.  And both genders and all ages have a broad, white stripe above each eye, back to the upper neck.
     Broad-winged hawks only nest in deciduous woods in the eastern United States.  They winter in Central America and northern South America.  Arriving in southeastern Pennsylvania in mid-April, they quickly pair, prepare stick nurseries high in woodland trees and raise young until they leave their cradles late in July.  Broadies feed on frogs, snakes, mice, insects, small birds and other critters in the woods.       
     Starting in September, broad-wings migrate in spectacular flocks of themselves out of the United States to wintering areas in Central and South America.  Each sunny morning during that month, broadies rise from tree tops in the woods where they spent the night and search for rising columns of warmed air called thermals.  When each broad-wing feels the rising of a thermal, it enters it and is spiraled higher and higher by the warm air.  More and more broadies enter the thermal until it is filled with many raptors spinning upward.  At the zenith of the thermal, the broadies peel off in long lines or flocks and head southwest, soaring high above the ground for mile after mile with little effort.  But gravity pulls them down and so the broad-wings are obliged to find another thermal and another, all day, day after day of their migration southwest to their wintering places.
     As a species, red-shouldered hawks are permanent residents in southeastern Pennsylvania's wet, bottomland woods.  And there is where they nest, in stick nurseries in the tree tops.  Their summer range is all of the eastern United States and most of them winter in the southeastern United States.  
     Adult red shoulders are pretty hawks, being robin-red underneath, with black and white stripes on their upper wings and tails and having rufous-red "shoulder" patches.  Immatures, however, are brown on top and brown-streaked on white below, which camouflages them.  And like broad-wings, red-shoulders mostly perch in ambush to catch and ingest frogs, snakes, mice, insects and other small critters in the woods.  Broadies and red-shoulders might compete a bit for food in bottomland woods, though broadies are not restricted to that habitat as red-shoulders are.  
     Though not seen as much as farmland hawks, these woodland hawks are an exciting part of southeastern Pennsylvania's avifauna.  They can be spotted with stealth and patience at the times they are living in this part of the state, and elsewhere across much of North America.