Red-Tailed Hawks

Red-Tailed Hawks are remembered as both beautiful and relentless predators, attacking the family’s poultry and Sheep and prompting the narrator and his father to fire at them together. Their image joins the grace of birds in flight to the violence of a rural household’s struggle to protect its animals.

Appearance and Hunting

The Red-Tailed Hawks appear among the birds of prey that threaten the family’s Chickens and Sheep. The narrator also names Golden Eagles and Goshawks, admitting that these attackers are magnificent birds even as he recalls the damage they inflict. They rise, hover, circle, then plunge suddenly, like bombs, to seize smaller animals in their talons and carry them away alive, screeching and kicking.

Damage and Response

Larger prey may be attacked and mutilated where they graze or sleep. The memory dwells on the dying lambs’ cries and on carcasses scattered across the fields, with eyes torn out and entrails spread on the ground, marked by clouds of flies. Against that scene, the father’s immediate order to shoot turns the family’s fear and anger into action: father and child fire together.

Narrative Significance

The account holds two judgments in tension: the hawks are beautiful, and their attacks are brutal. Its precise images of capture and aftermath make the danger concrete, while the shared gunfire places the birds within a remembered family response to threats against its animals.