Look up on almost any drive through rural Tennessee and there’s a good chance a hawk is watching from a fence post or circling on a thermal overhead. The state sits along a major flyway and offers everything from river-bottom forests to open pasture, which explains why so many types of hawks in Tennessee show up across the seasons. Some stay year-round, some pass through only in spring and fall, and a couple are rare enough that spotting one is worth writing down.
This guide walks through the eight species most likely to be seen in the Volunteer State, covering how to tell them apart, where they nest or hunt, and what makes each one distinct from the state’s owls, eagles, and falcons.
Types of Hawks in Tennessee: Quick Comparison
Before getting into individual profiles, it helps to see how these birds stack up side by side. The table below groups them by general size class and typical habitat, which is often the fastest way to narrow down an identification in the field.
| Species | Size Class | Typical Tennessee Habitat | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red-tailed Hawk | Large | Open fields, roadsides, farmland | Common, year-round |
| Red-shouldered Hawk | Medium-large | Wet deciduous forest, river bottoms | Common, year-round |
| Sharp-shinned Hawk | Small | Dense woodlands, backyard feeders | Uncommon resident, more common in migration |
| Cooper’s Hawk | Medium | Wooded suburbs, mixed forest | Common, year-round |
| Broad-winged Hawk | Medium | Deciduous and mixed forest | Common summer migrant |
| Northern Harrier | Medium-large | Open fields, marshes, grasslands | Uncommon winter visitor |
| Northern Goshawk | Large | Mature forest, higher elevations | Rare, irregular winter visitor |
| Rough-legged Hawk | Large | Open farmland, grasslands | Rare winter visitor |
1. Red-tailed Hawk
The red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is the bird most people picture when they hear the word “hawk,” and for good reason. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this is probably the most common hawk in North America, and if you’ve got sharp eyes you’ll see several individuals on almost any long car ride, anywhere. In Tennessee, that holds true along interstates and back roads alike, where the birds perch on utility poles scanning for movement below.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency notes that Tennessee birds look like the most common eastern form with a pale chest and dark band across the belly, and a reddish, unbarred tail. In flight, wings are long and broad with a dark bar on the leading edge, a helpful field mark when the tail color is hard to see against bright sky. Listen for the call too: the call is a distinctive descending raspy scream, kleeyeeeeer, the same sound Hollywood dubs over nearly every raptor shot regardless of species.
Diet-wise, this hawk earns its keep as a rodent controller. 85 to 90% of the Red-tailed Hawk’s diet is composed of small rodents, though it will also take snakes, rabbits, and the occasional bird. The TWRA reports the Red-tailed Hawk is a common, permanent resident statewide, and in winter the Tennessee breeding population is augmented by an influx of more northern nesting birds, with maximum numbers occurring from November through March. That winter bump makes the cold months an especially good time to look for them along fence lines and interstate medians.
Pro Tip: Red-tailed hawks are one of only a handful of raptors legal for beginning falconers to trap and train. Tennessee’s falconry regulations confirm that an apprentice-class permit holder may only possess an American Kestrel, Red-tailed Hawk, or Red-shouldered Hawk.
Anyone building a mental checklist of Tennessee raptors should also keep the state’s bald and golden eagles in mind, since a distant soaring red-tail is one of the most common eagle mix-ups reported by new birders.
2. Red-shouldered Hawk
The red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) trades the red-tail’s open fields for wet woods. Cornell’s All About Birds guide describes adults as colorful hawks with dark-and-white checkered wings and warm reddish barring on the breast, with a tail that is black with narrow white bands. The rust-colored patch that gives the species its name is often the last thing to catch the light, which is why the TWRA points out that the “red shoulder” is actually rust-colored and not always obvious.
Habitat is the biggest clue for this species. Cornell advises birders to look for Red-shouldered Hawks in deciduous woodlands, often near rivers and swamps, a pattern that holds across Tennessee’s bottomland forests. The TWRA confirms the Red-shouldered Hawk is a permanent resident and found throughout most of the state, and unlike some raptors, its numbers have moved in the right direction: it was listed as In Need of Management from 1976 until 1994 because of concerns over range-wide declines, though in Tennessee the population appears to have been increasing since the 1960s.
Vocally, this is the chattiest hawk in the state. It may be the most vocal of American hawks, but since a Blue Jay can imitate a Red-shouldered Hawk remarkably well, care must be used when identifying this bird by voice alone. Its diet leans heavily on snakes, frogs, and small mammals snatched from a perch rather than chased down in flight.
Important Note: Because red-shouldered hawks and the state’s rarer forest-dependent species share similar wooded habitat, TWRA researchers have flagged the same bottomland tracts as priority areas for both raptor and songbird conservation.
3. Sharp-shinned Hawk
The sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) is the smallest accipiter found in North America and one of the trickiest Tennessee hawks to identify with confidence. Short, rounded wings and a long, narrow tail let it thread through dense branches at speed, which is exactly the flight style needed to chase small songbirds through cover. Most sightings in Tennessee happen during spring and fall migration, when birds moving along ridgelines and river corridors pause to hunt before continuing south.
Backyard birders sometimes get an unwanted visitor when a sharp-shinned hawk targets a feeder, since the concentration of small birds around seed and suet is an easy meal. The species can be confused with the larger Cooper’s hawk, and the two are frequently misidentified even by experienced observers glancing at a fast-moving silhouette. A squared-off tail tip, smaller head, and thinner legs are the field marks most reliable for separating a sharp-shinned hawk from its bulkier cousin.
Common Mistake: Judging accipiters by size alone is unreliable in the field because male and female sizes overlap between species. A large female sharp-shinned hawk can approach the size of a small male Cooper’s hawk, so tail shape and head proportion matter more than overall bulk.
4. Cooper’s Hawk
Step up in size from the sharp-shinned and the next accipiter on the list is Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii). This mid-sized woodland hunter has adapted well to suburban Tennessee, nesting in mixed forest edges and hunting in neighborhoods with mature tree cover. Its diet centers on medium-sized birds, and doves in particular make up a large share of what it catches around backyard feeders and open lawns.
Cooper’s hawks favor a hunting style built on surprise rather than open pursuit, using hedgerows, fence lines, and low branches as cover before a short, explosive burst toward prey. A rounded tail tip (versus the sharp-shinned’s squared corners) and a proportionally larger head are the most dependable ways to tell the two accipiters apart at rest. Anyone who has watched mourning doves scatter from a feeder in a panic has likely witnessed a Cooper’s hawk hunt in progress.
Nesting pairs build stick platforms high in a tree fork, often reusing the same general territory year after year even if the nest itself gets rebuilt. Because the species hunts around human structures so readily, it’s also one of the hawks most likely to be seen from a kitchen window rather than a hiking trail.
5. Broad-winged Hawk
The broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) is a summer-only presence in Tennessee, and its migration is the stuff of legend among hawk watchers. The TWRA describes it as a medium-sized hawk with a stout body, a brown back, a reddish chest, and a short tail with broad black and white bands, with a pale underwing that has a dark outside edge in flight. It’s noticeably smaller and more compact than either the red-tailed or red-shouldered hawk sharing its forest habitat.
Timing matters with this species. TWRA data shows Broad-winged Hawks are a fairly common migrant and summer resident in eastern Tennessee, and less common in the west, usually arriving by early April and departing by early October. The fall exit is the main event: broad-wings are best known for their impressive fall migrations, when thousands of individuals travel along eastern ridges, through Texas, and on to their wintering grounds in Central and South America. Hawk-watch sites along East Tennessee’s ridgelines can log thousands of birds in a single September day when conditions align, and observers tracking the same migratory corridor into Texas often report the tail end of the same kettles passing through.
These swirling flocks, called kettles, form as birds ride rising thermals to gain altitude for free before gliding onward, a far more energy-efficient strategy than flapping the entire route south. On breeding grounds, the species feeds on a mix of small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and insects, including the occasional caterpillar plucked from foliage during the nesting season.
6. Northern Harrier
The northern harrier (Circus hudsonius) hunts in a style unlike any other Tennessee hawk, cruising low and slow over open ground rather than soaring high or ambushing from a perch. A flat, owl-like facial disc helps the bird locate prey by sound as much as sight, an adaptation more commonly associated with owls than daytime raptors. A conspicuous white patch at the base of the tail is the single best field mark, visible even at a distance as the bird tilts and rocks in flight barely above the grass.
Tennessee sees northern harriers primarily as winter visitors, arriving as breeding grounds farther north freeze over and open fields, reclaimed strip mines, and grassy river bottoms fill the same ecological role marshes serve elsewhere in the harrier’s range. Wetland-adjacent grasslands near heron habitat often host wintering harriers as well, since both groups favor the same open, prey-rich margins between water and field.
Unlike the state’s buteos and accipiters, adult male and female northern harriers look distinctly different from one another, a trait called sexual dimorphism. Males are pale gray above, while females and young birds wear streaky brown plumage, so a birder scanning a field on a winter afternoon may see what looks like two different species when it’s really one.
7. Northern Goshawk
The northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) is the largest and least frequently seen accipiter on this list, and confirmed Tennessee sightings are genuinely rare. This is a bird of mature, unbroken forest farther north, and the handful of records from Tennessee tend to come from higher elevations in the eastern mountains during irregular winter movements known as irruptions, when scarce prey up north pushes birds farther south than usual.
Size and attitude set the goshawk apart from Cooper’s hawk, its closest look-alike. A goshawk is noticeably bulkier, with a heavier chest, a pale eyebrow stripe, and a reputation among birders for aggressively defending its nest territory against anything that wanders too close, human observers included.
Important Note: Because sightings are so infrequent, any suspected northern goshawk in Tennessee deserves careful documentation and, ideally, photographs before being reported, since size alone is an unreliable way to separate it from a large female Cooper’s hawk at a distance.
Birders hoping for better odds at this species often look toward states with more extensive northern forest, and comparing notes with Wisconsin’s hawk populations gives a useful sense of how much more regular the goshawk becomes just a few hundred miles north.
8. Rough-legged Hawk
The rough-legged hawk (Buteo lagopus) closes out the list as another true rarity in Tennessee, a bird built for Arctic tundra that only occasionally wanders this far south in winter. Feathered legs extending all the way to the toes, an adaptation for hunting in brutal cold, give the species its name and separate it instantly from every other buteo on this list.
When one does show up in Tennessee, it favors the same wide-open farmland and grassland that draws red-tailed hawks and northern harriers, often hovering in place on beating wings while scanning for voles, a hunting technique less common among the state’s resident buteos. Light and dark color morphs both occur, and a dark belly patch combined with a pale, dark-banded tail helps confirm identification once the legs themselves are hard to see.
Sightings cluster in the coldest stretches of winter and tend to be one-off records rather than a reliable annual pattern, which is part of why serious hawk watchers treat a confirmed rough-legged hawk as one of the best finds of the season. Birders tracking this species across its more regular winter range often compare notes with observers in Colorado or Kansas, where open plains habitat makes rough-legged hawks a far more dependable winter sighting than in Tennessee.
Eight species, eight very different hunting styles, and a state diverse enough in habitat to support all of them at some point in the year. Getting comfortable identifying Tennessee’s hawks comes down to watching flight shape, tail pattern, and habitat together rather than relying on any single field mark. Whether it’s a red-tailed hawk on a fence post or a fleeting glimpse of a rough-legged hawk on a rare winter day, each sighting adds another data point to understanding how these raptors share the same Tennessee skies.