An Unjust Death

Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) Image by Cary Maures

Late this afternoon (February 16), one of my employees brought a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) that had just been struck and killed by a car to the office. Not 30 minutes earlier, the employee had seen the hawk circling in search of food over a grassy field and, in fact, the mangled bird was still holding a vole that it had captured in its tallon. What an incredibly depresing sceanario. While there are plenty of Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) around, this was the only Red-shouldered Hawk we had seen in quite a while and we'd been watching it for the last several weeks.