Searching for a Fierce Forest Predator
- jamesreddoch
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
By James Reddoch
If you happened to be hiking the trails on Peabody Mountain (part of the Crooked River Headwaters Conservation Easement) during the first week of June, you might have heard repeated, harsh calls—loud cries of “Kree, Kree, Kree, Kree, Kree, Kree, Kree, Kree…!” This is the alarm call of the American goshawk, a large forest predator that breeds in our area.
Goshawks hunt hares, grouse, woodpeckers, jays, crows, and a wide array of other birds and animals. Although the goshawk is similar in size to the commonly seen red-tailed hawk, many birders go their entire lives without spotting one of these secretive birds. This is because goshawks range over large territories and prefer the cover of thick, mature forests.
On this occasion, if you bushwhacked through hobblebush, moose maple, over stones and swollen streams in search of an American goshawk, you would not have found one. Instead, you would have met Gino Ellison, a field technician conducting research as part of the American Goshawk Occupancy Survey.
This survey is being conducted at 48 sites across the Northeast. Each site is roughly the size of a typical American goshawk nesting territory and contains 80–90 GPS pinpoints. Gino’s task? Visit each pinpoint, play a short recording of goshawk alarm calls—then wait and watch.
The status of the American goshawk is not fully understood, but their populations are suspected to be declining in many areas, especially those areas heavily developed or logged. Data from this survey is designed to help land managers tailor practices to better support this hawk, a bird whose presence is a good indicator of the overall health of a forest.
Goshawks are legendary for their fierce defense of territory—attacking other goshawks, larger predators, and even field researchers who stumble into their nesting area. When I asked the survey coordinator from the Roth Lab at the University of Maine, Orono, if I could shadow a field researcher, he warned that encounters with goshawks can include them exploding out of the brush from behind with talons bared.
I was actually hoping for just such an experience when I tracked Gino down on Peabody Mountain. We met on his second day at the site, and he’d been at it since before sunrise.
“You hope you get a response on the first day,” he said when I arrived. “Otherwise, you have to visit each of the 82 pinpoints.”
I spent five hours stumbling up and down the rugged terrain with him.
“Why does a retired investment banker like you decide to do this kind of work?” I asked.
“I like the idea of contributing to science,” he said. “I’m not a trained ornithologist or a data analyst, so I’m no help there. But what I can do is come out here by myself with a map and compass and look for these birds. I love being out like this. That’s how I can contribute to science.”
With that, he turned and waded through a rushing stream and up a jumble of boulders on the next ridge. I followed as he headed toward the next GPS site—one that might just hold the elusive American goshawk.
Sources:
Woodbridge, B.; Hargis, C.D. 2006. Northern goshawk inventory and monitoring technical guide. Gen. Tech. Rep. WO-71. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 80 p.
Squires, J. R.; Reynolds, R. T. Editors (2025). Birds of the World. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/norgos/cur/introduction
Photo Credit:
Norther Goshawk. GlacierNPS. As a work of the U.S. federal government, such work is in the public domain in the United States.
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