Red-Tailed Hawk

"I like this shirt.  Last Sunday, as I was wearing it while going up a small mountain, a hiker asked where she could get one." -Jim Morris

This shirt depicts a soaring red-tailed hawk from below accompanied by a crescent moon and the phrase, "fly beyond words where nature sings." Red-tailed hawks range from the northern treeline of the taiga south to Nicaragua and the West Indies. Their diet consists largely of small mammals, particularly rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits and hares). 

Red-tailed hawks have benefitted somewhat from human development. They prefer open areas with stands of tall trees from which they can observe the surrounding landscape. The vast plains of the Mississippi watershed have been fragmented by wildfire suppression and introduced trees, while the dense forests of the eastern and northwestern coasts have been thinned, making both habitats more suitable for red-tailed hawks. Highways also provide near-ideal habitat, as they can create continuous woodland edges through otherwise uninterrupted forest and provide occasional fresh roadkill. 

While human development has expanded viable red-tailed hawk habitat in the past century, other raptors have lost habitat in the process. Humans are throwing off the balance, and there are real consequences, many of which are yet to come. 

Artwork by Asante Riverwind, a former Sierra Club staffer, whom Jim met at a protest of the sale of lumber from old growth forests.