Monday, 15 December 2025
This article appeared in the latest issue of Australian Birdlife magazine. For more great reads, become a BirdLife Australia member and receive our quarterly, award-winning magazine in your mailbox.
West of Alice Springs, in the arid woodlands of Ngalia Warlpiri and Luritja Country, ecologist Dr Tim Henderson was tracking possums at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary when he glimpsed a deep-rufous hawk drift above the open canopy. It looked unfamiliar. He raised his camera, fired off a few frames, and watched it vanish into the distant woodland.
Back at camp, he sent the images to our team at BirdLife Australia. The verdict was instant: a juvenile Red Goshawk, the first confirmed record in Central Australia in more than three decades.
A moment like this might seem like a fluke, but for those of us working on BirdLife’s Red Goshawk Program, it spoke to something deeper. This species still writes its own story—one that we have only begun to decode.
Western science first documented the Red Goshawk 235 years ago. It was one of the first birds of prey encountered by Europeans when a specimen was found nailed to a settler’s hut at Sydney’s Botany Bay. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, records placed it across much of northern and eastern Australia, from northern New South Wales to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Yet it wasn’t until the latter half of the 20th century that researchers began to truly understand this rare and elusive raptor.
Between 1987 and 1990, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (now BirdLife Australia) undertook the first major field study of the Red Goshawk in the Top End and the Kimberley. Researchers Dr David Baker-Gabb and Dr Tom Aumann revealed much of what we know today about its breeding biology, hunting behaviour, and habitat preferences. They recorded just fourteen breeding pairs—an extraordinary total at the time, representing two-thirds of all known nests ever found in Australia up to that point.
The Red Goshawk has always been scarce, but over time even the keenest observers began noticing fewer and fewer sightings. In some regions, the bird simply disappeared. In recent years, work started by Dr Richard Seaton and built upon by PhD candidate Chris MacColl, key members of BirdLife’s Red Goshawk team, has used satellite tracking and long-term monitoring data to document the species’ dramatic range contraction. Their findings led to the Red Goshawk’s uplisting to Endangered under both Australian legislation and the global IUCN Red List.
That’s where our current work begins—deep in the remote parts of northern Australia, where we work alongside Indigenous Rangers, Traditional Owners, communities, and volunteers to locate and monitor breeding Red Goshawks and protect habitat on Country.
While we no longer scale trees like Baker-Gabb and Aumann once did, days in the field are still long and hot. We emerge from our tents before dawn, the maniacal cackles and guttural squawks of Blue-winged Kookaburras our alarm clock. The bush hums with friarbirds and honeyeaters, and Black Kites swoop on prey amidst the grey plumes of smoke rising in the distance from the dry-season burning.
Side by side, we drive from dawn until nightfall—cruising along remote dirt roads in second gear, craning our necks and scanning stringybark woodlands in search of nests. In areas of good habitat, we fan out and walk for kilometres off-road into the bush, peering through the shimmering heat for that telltale nest—a large stick platform, a metre or more across, built high on a large, horizontal limb of a tall emergent tree near water.
In places like the Kimberley, where roads are scarce and the landscape is carved by gorges and rivers, we rely on helicopters. From the air, Country unfolds like a mosaic of sandstone ridges, snaking creek lines, and paperbark swamps—the kind of habitat a Red Goshawk might choose to raise its young.
Searching from the sky was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Locating nests was hard enough, but we were searching for a very particular one. We passed hundreds of Whistling Kite nests, some Black-breasted Buzzards, and even a few belonging to Little Eagles. After hours of tracing rivers and creek lines, the pilot’s voice crackled through the headset: “That looks different”.
There she was—her golden eyes fixing curiously on us from atop a massive stick nest built in a fork of a tall paperbark. As I peered down from the helicopter, a flicker of movement beneath her caught my eye. Raising my binoculars, I glimpsed a tiny white chick nestled beneath her feathers.
Incredibly, within the hour, we found another nest. And then another. By the end of two days, we had located five nests across Dambimangari and Wilinggin Country—more than had ever been found in such a short time anywhere in Australia. We were pinching ourselves; it felt like a dream.
Each nest had a pair of adults sitting patiently or hunting low over the surrounding woodlands, and eggs or downy chicks barely two weeks old. For a bird with so few known breeding sites—only fifteen to twenty across the mainland—this discovery was astonishing.
Back at camp, the atmosphere was electric as our discovery sank in. The survey, led by BirdLife in collaboration with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Dambimangari and Wilinggin Rangers, was the first broad-scale search for the species in the Kimberley since 1990. It confirmed that this ancient region remains a refuge for wildlife that has vanished elsewhere—and underscored its importance for the Red Goshawk.
Using solar-powered GPS transmitters, Chris MacColl from the RARES Group at the University of Queensland tracks both adult and juvenile birds across vast distances. Each lightweight unit records precise location data several times a day, allowing him to follow their movements without disturbance.
Some adults travel hundreds of kilometres between breeding and non-breeding grounds—from Weipa south across Cape York, or from Litchfield National Park deep into the Tanami Desert. One female’s home range covered more than 400 square kilometres in a single season. For a raptor dependent on mature stringybark or paperbark trees for nesting and semi-open woodland for hunting, these journeys add a whole new dimension to our understanding of how the Red Goshawk uses the landscape.
The tracking maps also highlight the challenges. Wildfire scars trace across known territories; logging, clearing and mining concessions overlap key habitat. Even in landscapes that feel remote, the footprint of disturbance is never far away.
Today, we think the Red Goshawk remains secure in only a few strongholds—the Tiwi Islands, parts of Arnhem Land, and the most remote regions of the Kimberley, Kakadu, and Cape York. Here, vast tracts of intact woodland still stretch unbroken to the horizon. But even these landscapes are changing.
More intense late-season wildfires, capable of incinerating nests and hollow-bearing trees, are becoming increasingly common. In the south, the species has vanished altogether. Once seen as far as northern New South Wales, the Red Goshawk is now almost certainly extinct there—its decline likely driven by habitat clearing and fragmentation, and inappropriate fire regimes.
A predator that once ruled the canopy from Sydney’s coast to the Kimberley ranges now survives only in scattered pockets of the north. Yet even as challenges mount, new partnerships are showing a way forward.
Working alongside Indigenous Ranger groups has reshaped how we study and protect the Red Goshawk. Funded through the Australian Government’s Saving Native Species Program, BirdLife’s Red Goshawk team partners with Indigenous Rangers on Country, combining scientific insights with cultural knowledge.
Each trip begins with practical sessions on identifying raptors and recognising signs of nesting, followed by collaborative field surveys searching for Red Goshawks and evidence of breeding. Together, we record preferred habitat and any active nests in BirdLife’s Red Goshawk module in Birdata.
The sharing of knowledge about how healthy Country is maintained—such as the use of cool, early-season burning—has deepened our understanding of what Red Goshawks need to survive. These low-intensity burns, implemented at the start of the dry season, break up Country into a mosaic of fire scars that limit the spread of large, hot wildfires. This helps maintain the open understorey Red Goshawks use for hunting, while also reducing the risk of fire destroying nests, eggs, and the tall, mature trees essential for breeding.
The benefits of these partnerships continue long after we leave. Rangers manage and monitor nesting sites throughout the year, applying their deep understanding of fire, seasons and landscape change to protect both the birds and their habitat. Their ongoing stewardship ensures that caring for the Red Goshawk remains part of caring for Country.
Each partnership strengthens that connection and adds a new line to the Red Goshawk’s story—a story still being written across the north.
As the sun sinks behind the stringybarks and bloodwoods, and the silhouette of a Red Goshawk drifts above the canopy, I’m reminded of both the fragility and resilience of wildlife. The Red Goshawk is no longer the widespread predator it once was, and few among us will ever see it in the wild. But that doesn’t mean it is lost.
Each nest we find, each juvenile we track, each survey we undertake alongside Indigenous Rangers brings us closer to understanding what this species needs to survive. Discoveries like those at Newhaven and in the Kimberley remind us that the line between extinction and persistence is thin—yet in these remote corners, possibility still glows on the horizon.
Keeping the Red Goshawk’s flame alive will take commitment—from governments, scientists, Rangers, and all of us who care about Country. For the Red Goshawk—and everything beneath its soaring shadow—this must be a decade of collaboration and action, backed by sustained funding and support. With Commonwealth funding this work has taken flight, but support ends in June 2026. Continued investment will keep Indigenous Rangers on Country, safeguard vital habitat, and ensure this remarkable raptor’s story continues to soar.
Red Goshawks can be difficult to distinguish from other raptors and are often mistaken for Square-tailed Kites, female Swamp Harriers, large rufous Brown Falcons, juvenile Spotted Harriers, or dark-morph Little Eagles. Modern field and photographic raptor guides are invaluable for accurate identification.
Perched: slight crest; bold arrowhead-shaped black chequering on upperparts; pale head and throat; heavy black streaking over rich rufous breast and underparts; massive yellow legs and feet.
In flight: broad, deeply “fingered” wings; two-toned below – pale grey barred flight feathers contrasting with rufous body feathers; bursts of rapid flapping and gliding with strong, deep wing beats.
Age and sex: females are larger and heavier than males, with paler underparts and thicker legs; juveniles are redder overall, with a fully rufous head and face, brown eyes instead of yellow, and paler legs and feet.
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