Tyler’s Banded Red-Tailed Hawk – The Story Continues!

Back in April, I wrote a blog that introduced you to a Red-tailed Hawk who sports a metal band on her right leg and has resided in Tyler Arboretum since at least 2020. The presence of the band allows us to identify her as the same individual that has raised broods in the arboretum annually since at least 2021. It was her nest that a pair of Great Horned Owls commandeered in the spring of 2024 and raised two young owlets that entertained many visitors to Tyler.

Undaunted after losing their nest to the owls, our Red-tailed Hawk and her mate stayed in the neighborhood and tried again. We saw her and her mate carrying sticks for nest-building a few weeks later, but we were never able to locate the nest itself. In spring of 2025, we lucked out. First, in March, we witnessed our banded hawk and her mate copulating — fittingly atop Tyler’s iconic Giant Sequoia. This was confirmation that our banded friend is the female of the pair. Shortly afterward we found their nest in a nearby White Pine. The April 2025 blog ended with our lady hawk sitting on the nest in Tyler’s Pinetum incubating what was at least her fifth consecutive annual brood at Tyler Arboretum.

We now have a long overdue follow-up story … with a bonus.

Tyler birders closely monitored the nest from early spring into summer. We first spotted our female Red-tail incubating on April 2, so egg laying occurred sometime between then and copulation on March 19. The incubation period for Red-tailed Hawks is about 4-5 weeks so hatching likely occurred in late April. The fluffy white heads of two nestlings peeking above the rim of the nest were first spotted on May 7. Sadly, only one nestling survived. Two nestlings were seen in the nest on May 14 but on May 26 there was only one. This is not unusual. Birds of the World, a trusted online source from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, cites a study of Red-tail nests from the 1970s that found nestling mortality to be 20 percent.

Nevertheless, it was great fun to watch the surviving nestling grow. With each visit he/she looked a little older. Mama hawk was very attentive. The male of the pair delivers most of the food to a Red-tail nest and our male was seen, on at least one occasion, delivering a snake to Mom and baby. We also witnessed Mom tearing up prey and feeding the young bird.

On June 18, the baby was seen out of the nest and perched on an adjacent limb. According to Birds of the World, baby Red-tails typically leave the nest 42-46 days after hatching. This is quite consistent with our estimated hatching date of late April.

Throughout the summer, the young hawk continued to grow, molt into adult-like plumage and learn to fly. We frequently saw and heard the young bird calling to stay in contact with Mom and Dad. Juvenile Red-tailed Hawks are known to remain associated with their parents for up to six months after fledging. We spotted a juvenile hawk frequently during the summer and early fall. It was safe to assume this was our youngster, but by late fall and winter, sightings of juvenile Red-tails became infrequent. Since many Red-tailed Hawks, including juveniles, migrate in the fall, it could not be assumed that any juvenile we spotted in late fall or winter was our baby.

Now for the promised bonus:

This summer, as the birding group watched the baby grow, we decided to make a concerted effort to determine where and when the baby’s mother was banded. This would also help us determine her age. We needed the serial number on her band. Getting the complete sequence of eight engraved digits wrapped around a small band on a bird’s leg requires photos from all angles, not an easy task. Our photographers went to work and thanks to skill, persistence, patience, and with a little help from modern digital photography, we had the complete sequence of digits by the third week in July: 877-78126. Kudos to Bob Bedell, Dave Charlton and David Swerdlow.

With counsel from Laurie Goodrich, Director of Conservation Science at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, I submitted the code to the Bird Banding Lab at the U.S. Geological Survey for identification. Unfortunately, funding cuts and a prolonged government shutdown created an inevitable backlog at the lab. Their website, understandably, urged patience. But when I recently followed up by email, I was told they had no record of my submission. With a little persistence, I finally got an email response from a real human. She kindly offered to file another report for me. I sent her the information and within hours I had what we wanted.

Our banded Red-tailed Hawk, who we have decided to name Tyler, was banded in Cape May, New Jersey, on October 17, 2009. The report lists her hatch year as 2009, which means the bander identified her as a juvenile bird in her first year. Therefore, this coming spring, Tyler will be 17 years old. Laurie Goodrich tells me that Red-tailed Hawks “easily” live 20 years. However it’s a tough world out there for all birds, including Red-tailed Hawks, and multiple internet sources list the average life span for a Red-tail living in the wild to be 5-10 years. Cornell’s Birds of the World quotes a study from the Bird Banding Lab in 1994 that of over 5,000 Red-tails banded and recovered, only 31 survived to be greater than or equal to 17 years and 11 survived to 20 or more years. Cornell’s All About Birds says the oldest known Red-tailed Hawk living in the wild was at least 30 years, 8 months old when it was found in Michigan in 2011, the same state where it had been banded in 1981.

As of this writing, “Tyler” the lady hawk is alive and well. Another breeding cycle will start again in a month or two. We will keep our eyes open and hopefully will be able to report that yet a new family of Red-tailed Hawks is on the way.

And an added surprise!

In another piece of good fortune, I was able to connect with Dr. Gregory K. Ivins, who is listed as the bander on the certificate. He was thrilled to receive an update and sent me the following message:

Thank you so much for the update on 877-78126. She was caught in a bow trap at Cape May at 10:50 AM. She was a medium sized RTH with a wing chord of 375 mm and weight of 944 gm. I have been banding raptors since 1968 and it is always much appreciated to get follow-up. It is especially exciting when the bird is alive and a long term survivor. I really appreciate the photos — your photographers got some nice shots. Again, thank you so much and please keep me in the loop for further developments.

— Greg Ivins, MD