Northern Goshawk (The Most Aggressive American Raptor)

The Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) is a medium-large raptor in the family Accipitridae, which also includes other extant diurnal raptors, such as eagles, buzzards, and harriers.

The Northern Goshawks are secretive birds that typically live in large tracts of forest, so they are hard to find. The Northern Goshawk is an extremely secretive and elusive woodland raptor that avoids humans and human activity. Goshawks range from Alaska and Canada south to California in the west and southern New England and the Appalachian Mountains in the east. The northern goshawk nests in mature, unfragmented forests. It is important that those forests are safeguarded from human activity and development. Breeding habitats for goshawks are forests that include large-sized trees, a closed canopy, and an open understory.

The Northern Goshawks build stick nests. It is primarily built by the female. Sometimes their nesting territories may contain several nests that are constructed over the years. Nests are located in large deciduous trees on large branches or in the main forks of trees. It is constructed of sticks and twigs and lined with bark strips, conifer needles, and down feathers.

The Northern Goshawks are monogamous, and the pair bonds are often long-term. Both birds aggressively defend the nest, attacking any interloper, including humans. The adult is pale whitish-gray below with faint, black barring on the underbody. The topside is blue-gray with a blackhead and bold white eye-line. Adult males are often bluer above than females. The eye is dark red. The juvenile is whitish below with extensive dark streaking throughout, even on the under tail coverts. A few are lightly streaked. Upperside is brown with pale mottling along the upper wing coverts that form a narrow "bar." The juvenile also has a broad, whitish eye-line. The eye is yellow slowly becoming red after a few years.

The Northern Goshawks are opportunistic, eating a wide variety of prey. Squirrels, snowshoe hares, grouse, corvids, woodpeckers, and another medium to large songbirds are all potential prey of the goshawk. Northern Goshawks hunt inside the forest or along its edge; they take their prey by putting on short bursts of amazingly fast flight, often twisting among branches and crashing through thickets in the intensity of pursuit. Hunts by perching quietly at mid-levels in trees, watching for prey, often moving from one perch to another. When prey is spotted, hawk attacks with a short flight, putting on a great burst of speed and often plunging through tangled branches and thickets in pursuit of quarry. Sometimes searches for prey by flying low through woods.

The Northern Goshawks are, for the most part, non-migratory. Some birds move to lower elevations in the winter, and irruptive movements into more southern areas occur occasionally, generally in response to the collapse of the prey population.

The Northern Goshawks depend entirely on extensive stands of mature, old-growth forests. Goshawk presence is an indicator of forest maturity and low human disturbance. Unfortunately, as mature and old-growth forests become rarer and rarer, so do goshawks. Logging is the largest threat to Northern Goshawks. As logging pressures have increased, the goshawk has experienced population declines as a result of severe habitat loss and degradation. Additionally, the noise and disruption caused by intense industrial logging operations such as road building, heavy machinery operations, and logging truck traffic, have caused nest failure, especially during pair bonding, nest-building, and incubation.

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