By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia

I hate taking things back to the store, but I volunteered to take
my daughter’s dress back. And the trip provided a nice surprise.

My wife Vicki and 17-year-old daughter Lindsay had gone shopping
for a homecoming dress in Atlanta. After a trying and tiring day,
Vicki finally told Lindsay, “I am ready to go. Just get a dress.”

Well, she did. And the price surprised us all. That night,
Lindsay decided it was too much to pay for the dress. She really
didn’t like it anyway. Thank goodness! I didn’t like it or the
price tag.

Up in the sky

Saturday, I returned the dress to the store. And as I pulled out
from the multilevel parking deck underneath Phipps Plaza, I
happened to glance up at the sky. Soaring between the tall
buildings in Atlanta was a beautiful red-tailed hawk.

I watched in fascination as the hawk, with the bright sunlight
reflecting off its feathers, circled in the open spaces around
the buildings and above the traffic.

Red-tailed hawks are our most common and widespread raptor. They
can be found in a range of habitats including semi-open country,
pastures and fields, mixed woods, roadsides and now even cities.
They’re commonly seen soaring or perched overlooking open areas.

With eyesight sharper than any other bird, except other raptors,
the red-tailed hawk is well adapted to its job as feathered
predator. Most of its diet consists of small rodents.

City living not easy

But city living isn’t easy for hawks. Even with eyesight that’s
eight to 10 times more powerful than ours, hawks often don’t see
windows and crash into them. Swooping in for the kill, they may
hit a car instead.

As urban areas like Atlanta continue to expand, our native
wildlife are being forced to adapt or perish. Researchers say
raptors are fast adapting to urban areas and will stay.

Soaring between the tall buildings, the red-tailed hawk brings a
little bit of wildness to places like Atlanta.

(Mike Isbell is the Heard County Extension Coordinator with
the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.)