Swainson’s Hawks seemed to arrive right on time again this year. I saw
my first in Pocatello on the 2nd and there were a few reported on March
30-31. There’s an interesting discussion of early arriving (or not)
Broad-winged and Swainson’s Hawks taking place on the ebird review group
right now and I want to share a couple things I found very interesting.
Tony Leukering posted links to a couple of his articles detailing
identification pitfalls, some of which are not on most of our radar.
They’re at:

https://cobirds.org/cfo/ColoradoBirds/InTheScope/30.pdf
http://cowyebird.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-arrival-of-swainsons-hawks.html?m=1

Check out the photo of an adult Redtail at the first link. A very
interesting bird. The other thing I found really cool is looking at
eBird maps for the month of March for both species. There are plenty of
records for southern locations and a scattering of northerly records for
both species. However if you click the “Explore Rich Media” checkbox at
the right of the map (checking this box eliminates points for checklists
that don’t include photos or other media) all the Broad-winged records
north of North Carolina and Tennessee and all the interior west records
north of southern Idaho and Oregon disappear. ALL of them. Strong
evidence to support that Swainson’s Hawks rarely move north ahead of the
main migration pulse. Here’s a link to the map for Idaho:
https://ebird.org/map/swahaw?neg=true&env.minX=-133.4779375&env.minY=39.57926189552747&env.maxX=-94.8060625&env.maxY=51.04746231191178&zh=true&gp=true&ev=Z&mr=on&bmo=3&emo=3&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2018
Check out all the northerly records then click the rich media box and
watch the result.

So if ever you find one early, even only 2-3 days, remember how
important it is to get photos to document the occurrence.

Cliff

—
Cliff and Lisa Weisse
Island Park, Idaho
cliffandlisa@octobersetters.com