Red-shouldered Hawk in eucalyptus

Buteo lineatus

Red-shouldered Hawk · San Diego Botanic Garden · 7 March 2026

A Red-shouldered Hawk in a eucalyptus in a San Diego garden, calling. This is the hawk of Californian gardens and eucalyptus groves, a distinct western race of an eastern woodland bird, and far more at home in suburbs than its eastern cousin, which keeps to river bottoms and wet forest.

It is one of the more vocal hawks, calling persistently in flight, a clear, descending kee-yah repeated in series, often before it is anywhere in sight. The introduced eucalyptus isn't native habitat by any definition, but the hawk has taken to the tall, open-branched trees as readily as it would to a native oak.