For the 23rd year that I’ve been keeping count, a Swainson’s Hawk pair returned today. If it’s the same pair, they always show at one of our front pasture cottonwoods, where they’ve nested sev times, and always within sev hundred yds from the same tree.

I was curious what would happen this spring, because a Red-tailed Hawk pair has been roosting in the tree & eyeing an old nest site. Well, the Swainson’s Hawks made dive-bombing runs on the Red-taileds & the last I saw of the Red-taileds, they were headed out & up river. The Swainson’s are now perched in the cottonwood.

Even though we frosted last night & low Sun is supposed to be 27°, the Swainson’s give me hope that the current shoulder season will, indeed, soon turn to real spring. I’ll know for sure when I hear the first Lazuli Bunting sing.

Brian Carrigan
Blackfoot