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More on the Swainson's Hawk



Hi all,

After reading a lot of posts on the Swainson's Hawk I saw at Alligator
River, I thought I'd weigh in on the find.

After a successful trip to see the Allen's Hummingbird, I along with my
entire family, decided to give a bit of a look at Alligator River. When
one has a broken leg (as I do), its hard to bird just anywhere,
especially if it involves any walking. I was driving along looking for
what I could find - hoping for something better than the usual fare.
There were hte usual number of regular hawks and I started thinking "a
Swainson's would be kind of nice." I saw a group of three buteos and two
TVs. One of the buteos semed a bit slim bodied and long-winged but it
was flying dead away from me and vanished before giving me a look.
Before driving on, I scanned one more time and saw it coming back. This
time, I clearly saw the dihedral soaring profile and when it flapped,
the flap was different from a Red-tail. As it circled, I could see the
uniformly dark gray back (no white scapular spots) and the utterly
diagnostic wing shape (long, slender and rather pointed by virtue of 4,
not 5 notched primaries). At that point I knew I actually had a
Swainson's. Then, miraculously, the bird continued to drift toward me,
joined up with 2 Red-tails and circled around directly overhead by only
150 to 200 feet max. It was a young bird (hatched last summer) and
rather dusky (possibly suggesting it will be a dark (or darker) phase
bird. The head was rather solidly hooded, giving way to heavy
spade-shaped spots on the shoulders and upper chest, becoming sparser
and smaller-sized toward the flanks and belly. I got a very good look at
the underwings. The wing linings were sooty-buff, and spotted, but
none-the-less contrasted with darker and grayer primaries and
secondaries. With it flying side-by-side with a Red-tail, even my wife
(a non-birder) could see how strikingly different it was from the
Red-tail.

I called Jeff Pippen to put the word out, and was actually watching it
fly away while talking with him. I also tried, but was out of range to
call John & Paula Wright, who I'd birded with earlier that day. I was
glad to hear that John got teh word and got there in time to relocate
it. I felt hat was rather likely. That the bird has actually stuck
around a few days, I find utterly remarkable. This is migration and I
had thought (obviously wrongly) the bird was a migrant. It makes me
really wonder if we've been overlooking this species a lot - the way we
used to struggle to find a Rough-leg in NC - until discovering that they
seem to really like Alligator River and are, apparently, quite regular
every winter. It occurs to me that Swainson's in spring where Rough-legs
occur in winter, is quite reasonable. When I lived in N. Utah, both
species were common to abundant and occupied the same habitat -
obviously at different times of year although once I actually did see
both species flying together.

Mike Tove