FeatherFlix Bird Video of the Week: Red-tailed Hawk Hunts the Grasslands

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FeatherFlix Bird Video of the Week
Red-Tailed Hawk Hunts the Grasslands

The Red-tailed Hawk is the avian apex predator of the North American grasslands and partner to humans in maintaining them.

Red-tailed Hawk Hunts the Grasslands
by Michael Godfrey, Founder of FeatherFlix

In discussing a life system, a biological community, where better to start than with its apex avian predator, its top gun? In North America’s grasslands that would be the Red-tailed Hawk.

Other raptors, even larger ones, utilize grasslands but of those which are obligate to grasslands - - must live in that habitat - - Red-tailed Hawk predominates. It is the most numerous and obvious of the grassland raptors across the continent. It is the hulking figure perched in the roadside tree, even on a sign on the interstate highway, hunting the mowed roadsides. Or it may hunt soaring, circling over a promising open acreage, scanning for a rodent’s flicker in the grass. What do we see below the Red-tailed Hawk, perched or soaring? Grass.

We scarcely notice the grasslands, take them for granted. That seems strange because we created the grasslands. If that sounds like a sweeping generality, it is and it does have its limitations. However, in temperate North America (not the tropical or boreal parts) with more than 15 inches of annual rainfall (10, by some accounts), all existing grasslands are created and maintained by humans. It has always been so.

Why do humans create and maintain grasslands? To benefit the grazing ungulates on which humans depend. Cattle, sheep, bison, horses, pigs, camels, saiga, reindeer are all grazing ungulates. Some are wild but harvestable, some are domesticated. To graze is to eat grass. Grazing is different from browsing, eating leaves, buds, twigs; different morphology, different gut design and chemistry.

How do humans create and maintain grasslands? Fire traditionally, mechanical and chemical means presently, for better or worse. The grazing ungulates help maintain the grasslands by mowing down, stomping, pawing, horning, pooping on woody saplings. If the climate is cold and dry enough, steppe grasslands develop which the grazing ungulates can maintain without human help.

What happens to temperate-region grasslands which humans do not actively manage? They reforest. Quickly.

So humans have a built-in kinship with the grassland beings, the grassland birds especially, the grassland raptors in particular. Because all temperate grasslands have to be maintained by humans (if you don’t believe that, try leaving your lawn unmowed for a few years) we are active grasslanders no less than the Red-tailed Hawk and the mice and voles they eat. In fact, rodents - - also grazers - - multiply so profusely that they can quickly threaten the stands of grass they live in. Rodents need to be recycled constantly or they bust the bodega. In North American grasslands, the Red-tailed Hawk is one of our main allies in rodent recycling. Alliances need to be recognized and nurtured.

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Copyright 2022 by Michael A. Godfrey. All Rights Reserved. For permission to reuse material from FeatherFlix Bird Video of the Week, to send corrections, or to submit your video, please contact us at [email protected] Thank You!