RED-TAILED HAWK GALLERY
(Buteo-jamaicensis)

eBird provides this description of the Red-tailed Hawk:  Most common roadside raptor across much of North America. Often perches atop telephone poles, light posts, and edges of trees. Incredible variation in plumages, including less common dark morphs and various regional differences. Eastern adults have brilliant reddish-orange tail and pale underparts with obvious band of dark marks across belly. Western birds are typically darker. Immatures do not have a red tail.

The photos below are of a bird I saw near Sim’s Bayou, Houston, Texas, on May 22, 2020.  

Red-tailed Hawk, Sim's Bayou, Houston, Texas. May 22, 2020.
Red-tailed Hawk, May 22, 2020.
Another closer look at the Red-tailed Hawk, May 22, 2020.
Detail of tail feathers, Red-tailed Hawk, May 22, 2020. By the way, these photos were taken at the Houston Audubon Raptor Education Center, not in the wild.


A little more info about the Red-tailed Hawk from All About Birds:

This is probably the most common hawk in North America. If you’ve got sharp eyes you’ll see several individuals on almost any long car ride, anywhere. Red-tailed Hawks soar above open fields, slowly turning circles on their broad, rounded wings. Other times you’ll see them atop telephone poles, eyes fixed on the ground to catch the movements of a vole or a rabbit, or simply waiting out cold weather before climbing a thermal updraft into the sky.