A Red-Tail Timeshare

Owl nestlings in 2020. Photo by Brad Scott.

There’s a hot piece of real estate in Champaign County where the rent is low and the view is great, but the tenants are never the same two years running. Since at least 2017 (the year I moved to the area), this high-turnover penthouse has been maintained by a pair of Red-tailed Hawks. It’s a huge, sturdy nest, built of locally sourced branches in a lofty pine tree. And, remarkably, it has hosted a different family every spring: red-tails one year and Great Horned Owls the next––as reliable as clockwork.

Red-tailed Hawks are notable nest-builders, crafting and refurbishing multiple large stick nests over their lifetimes, while Great Horned Owls are notable nest co-opters, opportunistically taking over the recent homes of other raptors, often red-tails. These owls won’t even refurbish someone else’s fixer-upper, or use the same nest twice...unless it’s been renovated for them.

And so, it appears that the timesharing renters of this particular Champaign County nest have come to a longstanding, if not wholly equitable, arrangement: In odd years (2017, 2019, 2021), the hawks revamp the nest with fresh material and settle in to raise a brood (apparently two fledglings in each 2017 and 2019, and one in 2021). Then, in even years (2018, 2020, and my money’s on 2022), the owls reclaim the refurbished nest and trash it as they raise their own young (one fledgling in 2018 and two in 2020). The owls then leave the property to the hawks to rebuild and use the following year.

The great horneds, after all, have the advantage of choice––they begin their courtship in December and have chosen a nesting site in January, well before the hawks have even begun (I’m guessing) to think about starting a family. The owls’ floofy young then take their first steps out of the nest (a behavior called “branching”) in March, the same month that the Red-tailed Hawks finish setting up house. In May, after owl fledglings have long flown away, hawk babies are still nest-bound fuzzballs!

Every year for this particular Champaign County nest, the Great Horned Owls have first right of refusal. Is it still a mess from last year’s untidy owl kids? Hard pass. Has it been nicely redone, remodeled, and cleaned up by last year’s hawk tenants? Sign that lease. By the time the hawks come around to check out the property again, it has been claimed for months.

Hawks setting up house in 2021. Photo by Brad Scott.

Over the past five years, this nest has not been empty for a single breeding season, suggesting that it’s in a prime location for both raptors. The surrounding habitat seems ideal, a mix of mature trees for perching and plentiful grassland, crisscrossed with the tunnels of abundant, and apparently very delicious, rodents. One evening at twilight in 2020, I was lucky enough to even spy the mother owl descend swiftly from her perch near the nest tree, snag a rodent in the grass, and deliver the meal to her eager young. Fast food indeed.

Of course, I’m a relative newcomer to this neighborhood, so I do not know when the nest was built, or for how many years these species have been trading it. Both are highly territorial, though, so it’s very likely that the same pairs are returning to this timeshare again and again. I also long wondered where the pairs nested in their “off” years; I imagined they swap a second property too, perhaps even better than this one, but I did not know its location.

Thanks to a gracious fellow birder, however, I recently learned. Less than a kilometer away, as the hawk or owl or crow flies, there is another nest, in another pine tree, in similar habitat. For at least the past three years, my new birder friend told me, it has alternately hosted hawks and owls in the exact opposite pattern to the one I’ve seen. At the end of March 2021, it housed two fluffy owlets. The hawks at the nest I watch, meanwhile, were sitting on eggs. The owls eventually fledged their pair of youngsters, and the hawks fledged one.

Owl nestlings at the newfound “second location” in 2021. Photo by Brad Scott.

Looking around at these two properties, I cannot fairly assess which is more desirable from a raptor point of view. Which offers better shelter or more food or a preferred vantage point for taking in the scenery? Perhaps they are equally homey. Only the hawks and owls know for sure.

I do know that their annual switcheroo has been a great source of entertainment, and highly educational. As long as those pine trees stand, hopefully for decades more, they will undoubtedly remain in-demand residences for these fascinating birds.