Brian, we had a flurry of black-chinned and rufous duking it out for a week, and now near silence. They did drain the 2 cup feeders in a matter of days, I guess I should do the math but that sounds like plenty. I’m waiting for a broad-tailed to show up. Or at least a Calliope. The hummers are hitting the hyssop fairly hard as well.
Seeing lots of juvenile hummingbirds. Have: Black-chinned, Rufous & Calliope. The only time they’re semi-tolerant of one another is right at daybreak. They’re at least civil, with a hummer perched at each port & sev hovering, waiting their turn. But, after about 20 minutes, pure chaos. I’ve seen at least 11 individual hummingbirds, including a juv Black-chinned with some leucistic wing feathers.
Based on previous correspondence with Bill Moore, calculated by how much nectar they’re consuming, at least 35 diff’t hummers are hitting the feeder. Also, saw 2 juvenile Spotted Towhees scratching under the seed feeder, bringing nesting birds to #31 for the place.
Many thanks for that foot tip. I’ll remember that. The chest pattern told me RT but all the white on the face made me think otherwise. Happy to be set straight. Between here and Montour at the moment it is thick with raptors, particularly late evening. Nice place to practice.
Yes, Chuck is correct – I didn’t see the original photos from your yard, and assumed we were talking about the photo in the second post. But the photos of the hawk in your yard are indeed of a juvenile Red-tailed, as Chuck says.
I feel that stability has returned to the universe, as it was very disconcerting to me to disagree with Chuck on an i.d. 😉
Liz, note the difference in the feet on your photo on the fence post, and the Macauley Library photo of the Swainson’s.
Gracias, Mark, nice to get feedback. And thank you Chuck. Just to be clear my first photos were in my yard, the second post was from Maccauley and labeled “Swainson Hawk.”
I’m not sure if it was the Swainson or an RT this a.m. that took out the kestrel nest in our front maple. We woke up to a ton of racket, lots of kestrel alarms, and upon leaving for our walk, a hawk flew out of the maple carrying what looked like nesting material and a nestling, which he casually ate for breakfast at the top of a utility pole while the kestrels mobbed him.
Typically the kestrels nest in a box here, but they moved into the maple this spring – this would be a second clutch, and now I’m afraid it’s gone. I didn’t know hawks would raid a kestrel nest. Dang…
That’s a young Swainson’s Hawk – possibly a dark morph. The heavy, tear-drop shaped spots on a tawny background are typical of juveniles of darker Swainson’s. But the real clincher is the small, delicate feet – RTHA has much larger feet.
The white face is what I was looking at… but Chuck, keep talking to me. I’m not convinced… only amazed how close I could get. I was comparing with this and others in the MacCaulay library. In flight there was no red in the tail, but I kept staring at the beak… also all around it just seemed a tad bit smaller than a red tail.
Meant to chime in earlier – had a whining Swainson in a neighboring field last weekend, with what looked to be two adults perched up in the nearby poplars. Then today, upon pulling into our driveway, was a juvenile perched by our newly mown meadow. Not shy at all, he let me get fairly close. He pounced on something that must have escaped, then took off for the trees. What a dapper gent.
Liz Medes
Gem County
Home of Idaho Birding and the Idaho Bird Records Committee
