Very interesting behavior, Cliff. A few years ago, I saw an adult Broad-winged Hawk (uncommon in winter here) attending an army ant swarm near San Blas. It was perched on a low branch over the swarm, and I first thought that it was hoping to catch one of the 5-6 Fan-tailed Warblers also attending the swarm. But that wasn’t it at all. It periodically dropped to the ground to grab a beetle or other small arthropod fleeing the ants. At one point, it even stayed on the ground, and rooted around in the fallen leaves looking for bugs.

It seems that Broad-winged Hawks will take advantage of any opportunity to score some grub . . .

Mark Stackhouse
westwings@…
from Mexico:
01-323-285-1243 (San Blas, Nayarit)
001-801-518-5618 (cellular – U.S. and Mexico)
from U.S.
011-52-323-285-1243 or
1-801-518-5618

I’ve nothing exotic to report, but for the past week, I’ve been watching parent chickadees feed their fledgings in my North End backyard. I expected to see them offer sunflower seeds. What’s been a wonder to me is watching the adults land on my rose bushes that are being “enjoyed” by aphids at the moment. They’ve enticed their young to join them, so at times, I’ve had four chickadees gleaning from my roses. Seems a special sight to me.

Kerry Fitzharris
Boise’s North End

Very cool, Cliff. I like the idea of a buteo fly-catching! My first salmon fly experience was on the the Middle Fork of the Salmon years ago, and Lewis Woodpeckers we’re acting like empids.

This afternoon I spotted a very small Buteo shaped bird sitting in a dead tree on the bank of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River about one mile downstream from Island Park Dam. It had dark brown streaks on the sides of the whitish breast, a pale head, white throat framed by dark malar stripes. When it flew I could see it was molting primaries, had a short tail with narrow bands, and the wing beats were noticeably quick. I’ve never seen one here outside migration so it was pretty cool to see this bird.

Even more interesting, it was catching large stoneflies (Salmon Flies) along with a couple Swainson’s Hawks. However it had a different strategy than the Swainson’s, which fly back and forth catching the bugs on the wing. This bird hunted from a perch, flying out to catch passing bugs then returning to a different perch. I watched it for ten minutes or so before losing track of it and I never relocated the bird.

Cliff

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Cliff and Lisa Weisse
Island Park, Idaho
cliffandlisa@…