Goshawk

You can identify an adult goshawk by their slate gray, blue back, dark cap, and white eye line. The belly has white bands with black and gray. The red eye coloration in adults is one of their most outstanding characteristics. Immature Goshawk are brown on the back and on the top of the head and their underneath is white striped with brown. They also have a white eye band, although it is not as conspicuous as in the adults, and a yellow iris. The full adult plumage is not arrive at until the third year, although second year birds will have certain adult plumage. As in all the accipiters the lady Goshawk is bigger than the male at about 24 inches in height while the male Goshawk is about 22 inches tall. Females can weigh up to three pounds. They are about the size of a Cooper's Hawk with a wing span of about 45 inches. One person described the Goshawk as a grey blur shooting over the ground squirrel colony and into the trees for food. For the few, watching chicks grow from little white fluffs to grey bullets dodging aspen trees is awe inspiring.

The inhabited regions by the Goshawk are through out the northern hemisphere moderate regions from Siberia through northern Asia and into Europe and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. In North America this family of birds breeds from Alaska over Canada and the northern line of states in addition to New England, and northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota then south along the western mountain ranges into Mexico. There seems to be some expansion of their range in the eastern United States with breeding records reported as far south as Maryland.

A bird of dense, lush forests, in Minnesota they are detected in the northern part of the state in the summer, and will migrate south in the winter. Their preferred habitat is in a ponderosa pine forests in the southwestern United States.

After mating the female Goshawk lays between two and five eggs in a hardy nest built of small branches and sticks. The location of the nest is high in a tree. They often construct a nest in the crotch of the tree. One personality trait of the adult Goshawk's is its savage guarding of their nests and will display aggressive behavior toward humans who approach the nest. The post fledging dependency cycle is the time between when the young leave the nest until they are no longer dependent on their parents for food.

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