Art by Barry Kent MacKay
An All-Creatures.org
Art and Photo Presentation

(Artwork - 094)
Northern Goshawk
(Accipiter gentilis atricapillus)

The North American race of the Northern Goshawk is distinctly different from other races, with pale gray, very fine and variable barring on the underparts, a bright red iris in the eye of the adult and the distinctive dark cap, a dark blue-grey, almost black. As is true of raptors generally, there is quite a bit of individual variation.

But like the others it is a forest bird and specializes on preying on birds, and medium small mammals. Here in Ontario, Canada, red squirrels are often preyed upon, but I portrayed this bird just after capturing a female Spruce Grouse (Falcipennis canadensis).

The patron who ordered this painting wanted the bird, found in boreal and mountainous forest regions, on a rock outcropping. They normally don’t perch in such places, but might if they had just captured prey, so I showed the bird with an obviously freshly taken grouse. The hawk is a male.

Northern Goshawk’s breeding range, in North America, is from Alaska to Newfoundland, and south, in the east, into the New England states, and, in the mountains of the west, into Mexico. Although you can find them in the coldest boreal forest in the dead of winter, with temperatures down below 30 degrees C., they are somewhat migratory, so that there are no provinces and territories in Canada or northern contiguous U.S. states where they can’t be encountered in winter, so long as there are trees or forests.

The painting is in acrylics, on compressed hardboard, and is approximately life-size.

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