Stand in an open Maine field for twenty minutes and there is a good chance a hawk will drift overhead, whether it is a red-tailed hawk circling on a thermal or a northern harrier skimming low over the marsh grass. Maine’s mix of coastal cliffs, dense spruce forest, farmland, and wetlands supports nine types of hawks in Maine, each with its own hunting style, habitat preference, and seasonal pattern. Some, like the red-tailed hawk, stay year-round and perch on utility poles along nearly every rural road. Others pass through only during migration or show up as rare, unexpected visitors.
This guide walks through each species Mainers are likely to encounter, along with the field marks, habitats, and behaviors that separate a red-tailed hawk from a Cooper’s hawk or a rough-legged hawk from a red-shouldered hawk. For a broader look at how these same species behave elsewhere in the country, the hawks found across North America follow similar patterns of buteo, accipiter, and harrier adaptation.
| Species | Family Group | Size | Status in Maine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red-tailed Hawk | Buteo | Large | Year-round resident |
| Red-shouldered Hawk | Buteo | Medium | Breeding resident |
| Broad-winged Hawk | Buteo | Small-medium | Summer breeder, leaves by fall |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | Accipiter | Small | Year-round, forest interior |
| Cooper’s Hawk | Accipiter | Medium | Year-round, suburban and rural |
| Northern Goshawk | Accipiter | Large | Uncommon, deep forest resident |
| Rough-legged Hawk | Buteo | Large | Winter visitor only |
| Northern Harrier | Circus | Medium-large | Breeding resident, open habitats |
| Swainson’s Hawk | Buteo | Medium-large | Very rare vagrant |
1. Red-tailed Hawk
The red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is the hawk most people in Maine have already seen without knowing its name. It is probably the most common hawk in North America, and sharp-eyed drivers will spot several individuals on almost any long car ride. Look for a broad, rounded wing shape and a short tail typical of buteos.
Most red-tailed hawks are rich brown above and pale below, with a streaked belly, and the tail is usually pale below and cinnamon-red above, though young birds show a brown, banded tail instead. According to the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences, the red-tailed hawk can grow up to 22 inches long, with a wingspan of up to 53 inches.
Red-tailed hawks favor open country: farm fields, highway medians, and forest edges where they can watch for voles, rabbits, and snakes from an elevated perch. They share this open-country habitat with several owl species found in Maine, which hunt many of the same rodents after dark.
Pro Tip: Check the leading edge of the wing for a dark patagial bar when a soaring hawk is too far away to see tail color clearly. This mark is one of the most reliable ways to confirm a red-tailed hawk in flight.
2. Red-shouldered Hawk
The red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) is a forest-loving buteo that favors wet woodlands over the open fields red-tailed hawks prefer. Adults are colorful hawks with dark-and-white checkered wings and warm reddish barring on the breast, and the tail is black with narrow white bands.
Its voice carries almost as far as its silhouette. Its rising, whistled kee-rah call is a distinctive sound of the forest, often heard before the bird is seen. Red-shouldered hawks favor deciduous woodlands, often near rivers and swamps, where they build stick nests high in a main tree crotch.
Diet leans heavily on small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles, including the same snake species found across Maine that share these bottomland forest habitats. Watch riverside tree lines in spring, when red-shouldered hawks are most vocal while defending nesting territory.
3. Broad-winged Hawk
The broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) is the smallest of Maine’s three nesting buteos. It is fairly plump compared to the smaller wingspan of red-shouldered hawks and especially the larger red-tailed hawk, according to Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. It frequents woodland edges and often perches on roadside utility lines, making it one of the easier buteos to spot from a car.
Broad-winged hawks are famous for their migration rather than their looks. Each September, thousands gather into swirling flocks called kettles as they head toward Central and South America, following a route that traces the shoreline of the Great Lakes before turning south. The Natural Resources Council of Maine notes that people in Mexico often call this migration the “River of Raptors,” as birds pass the northern and western shores of the Great Lakes before turning south to avoid a nonstop flight over the Gulf of Mexico.
Hawk watchers along ridgelines in states like Ohio often report massive broad-winged kettles passing overhead during peak migration weeks in mid-September, right around the time Maine’s own birds are departing.
4. Sharp-shinned Hawk
The sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) is North America’s smallest accipiter and a forest-interior specialist built for speed rather than soaring. Only three accipiter species live in North America, and all three nest in Maine, with short, broad wings and long tails suited to hunting inside dense forest.
According to AviBirds, the sharp-shinned hawk is a specialist in aerial agility, predominantly preying on smaller birds and showcasing remarkable hunting skills in mid-flight. This makes backyard feeders stocked with the smaller finch species that visit Maine yards an occasional hunting ground, especially in winter.
The sharp-shinned hawk is quite similar to the Cooper’s hawk but slightly smaller, and it is more typical of Maine’s forest interior, while Cooper’s hawk has adapted to fragmented, suburban areas. Telling the two apart in the field takes practice, since size alone can be misleading when a large female sharp-shinned overlaps with a small male Cooper’s hawk.
5. Cooper’s Hawk
The Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) is the mid-sized accipiter that has adjusted best to life near people. As Maine wildlife officials note, this species has moved into fragmented, suburban landscapes where the sharp-shinned hawk rarely ventures, taking advantage of dense shrub cover and reliable prey around bird feeders and backyard gardens.
Look for a rounded tail tip (versus the sharp-shinned’s squared tail), a proportionally larger head, and a slower, more deliberate wingbeat pattern. Cooper’s hawks ambush songbirds and small mammals from concealed perches, then pursue prey through obstacle courses of branches and fences with startling maneuverability. Readers comparing accipiter behavior in different regions may notice similar suburban adaptation among Wisconsin’s hawk species, where Cooper’s hawks have likewise expanded into residential neighborhoods.
Pro Tip: If a hawk is regularly visiting a backyard feeder, check the tail shape while it is perched. A rounded tail tip usually points to Cooper’s hawk, while a squared-off tail suggests the smaller sharp-shinned hawk.
6. Northern Goshawk
The northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), increasingly referred to as the American goshawk following a recent taxonomic split, is the largest and most formidable of Maine’s three accipiters. It lives deep in mature, unbroken forest and rarely ventures into open country or suburban edges the way Cooper’s hawks do.
Goshawks are famous for defending their nests with startling aggression. Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife warns that in woodland areas, American goshawks can be aggressive when defending nesting territory, occasionally diving at hikers or researchers who wander too close to an active nest site. Because it depends on large blocks of undisturbed forest, the species is sensitive to logging and habitat fragmentation, a concern shared by several other species of conservation concern in Maine.
Sightings are far less frequent than encounters with sharp-shinned or Cooper’s hawks, since goshawks avoid the open, edge habitats where birders typically watch for raptors. Patience near remote, older-growth forest tracts offers the best odds of a real encounter.
7. Rough-legged Hawk
The rough-legged hawk (Buteo lagopus) is a winter-only visitor to Maine, arriving from the Arctic tundra where it nests during the brief northern summer. Maine’s state wildlife agency lists it as an occasional visitor during winter, the fourth buteo species to appear in the state alongside the three that nest here.
True to its name, this hawk has feathered legs extending down to the toes, an adaptation for hunting over open, snow-covered terrain. It favors coastal fields, airports, and reclaimed farmland where voles and other small rodents remain active under thin snow cover. Both light and dark color morphs occur, and hawk watchers scanning open fields in states like Colorado encounter the same variable plumage during the species’ wintering season further west.
8. Northern Harrier
The northern harrier (Circus hudsonius) hunts differently than any other Maine hawk, gliding low and slow over marshes and open fields rather than soaring high or ambushing from a perch. Maine’s wildlife department places it in the same broad raptor family as the state’s buteos and accipiters, noting that the family Accipitridae includes hawks, eagles, and the northern harrier.
A distinctive white patch at the base of the tail is visible from a distance, and the owl-like facial disc helps the harrier locate prey by sound as well as sight while flying just above the vegetation. Males are pale gray while females and young birds are streaky brown, a difference striking enough that early observers once mistook the two sexes for separate species. Harriers nest on the ground in grasslands and marshes, similar to the open grassland habitat favored by hawks in prairie states such as Kansas.
9. Swainson’s Hawk
The Swainson’s hawk (Buteo swainsoni) is not a species most Maine birders expect to check off their list. This buteo breeds primarily across the open grasslands and prairies of the western United States and Canada, far outside its typical range from the Atlantic coast.
Important Note: Swainson’s hawk sightings in Maine are extremely rare and generally classified as accidental or vagrant occurrences, usually involving individual birds pushed far off their normal migratory corridor. Anyone reporting one should expect significant interest from the local birding community, since confirmed records are uncommon.
When Swainson’s hawks do stray into Maine, they typically appear during fall migration, when the species undertakes one of the longest journeys of any North American raptor, traveling to wintering grounds in Argentina. Most of the population funnels through states like Texas on this route, which makes a Maine appearance a genuine deviation from the norm rather than a predictable seasonal event.
Nine species is a lot of hawk diversity for one state, and the differences between them come down to a handful of consistent field marks: wing shape, tail length, habitat, and hunting style. A buteo soaring over an open field, an accipiter darting through forest cover, and a harrier gliding low over a marsh are rarely confused once those basic patterns click into place. Keeping a pair of binoculars handy and checking silhouette before color often solves an identification faster than trying to match every plumage detail at a glance.