.... I am not an expert. This is what my neighbor said. She said hawks depend on falling on their prey at high speed from the sky, claws out. She said once the hawk is on the ground, it is completely harmless.
I think that your neighbor is confusing a red tail hawk with a peregrine falcon. Hawks fly about as well as a crop duster, highly maneuverable but still a strictly slow, low altitude tree top predator. Falcons catch flying prey on the wing (that means while the falcon itself is on the wing) usually killing their prey when they strike it or when the disabled prey falls from 1,000s of feet. A falcon puts me in mind of F16 Flying Falcon fighter jet, extremely fast and deadly to everything that flies.
That said I have watched a breeding pair of Red Tail hawks preform their late winter mating-feeding rituals (like humans on a dinner date or roosters with a morsel calling his hens) and the female red tail watches from beyond all hope of unaided human viewing while the male hawk showcases his hunting skills at low altitude. After the male makes a kill the female red tail will spiral downward to share in the kill and to supposedly score the chick raising potential of her suitor.
Over the years I have rescued several fully grown chickens from red tail hawks. (small or young chickens are killed to quickly for there to be any hope of rescue) Both chickens survived without lasting ill effects. This was possible because the local crows were giving the hawk heck double hockey sticks until I showed up to relieve the crows. This meant that the hawk was too busy fighting off crows to get down to a hawks' business. A hawks' business is eating a helpless hen or rooster alive while the hawk controls it with his talons.
I totally agree with the balance of nature thing, but there are heaps of malarkey being strewn around by the nature is beautiful
crowd. Nature it isn't beautiful, its nature for Peat's sake. If you can stand to watch it because I can't, there is a youtube video out there of a grown giraffe being eaten alive and disemboweled while a lioness holds it down by the nose for the 45 minutes it takes the giraffe to die. There are also numerous posts on BYC about people rescuing a chicken from the clutches of a hawk, some of these posts with supporting photos. WARNING: if you are offended by one chicken supposedly bullying another don't view these photos!!!
A red tail hunts from low altitude and quite often from a perch like a tree, an electric pole, or a phone cable while keeping his eyes pealed for any movement that could be dinner (are you ready for this now?) and watching it like a hawk until the time is right to pounce. For a hawk intent on catching your hens or roosters the time to pounce is generally when your chicken is isolated and far from cover.
I doubt there is a female red tail hawk alive that can fly off with a full size hen. Since a male red tail is only 75% as big as a female red tail I KNOW there isn't a male red tail hawk alive who can do the deed. For either sex of hawk It would be like a Piper Cub picking up and flying off with an F150 Ford pickup truck dangling from the Piper's landing gear.