[birding] Linn Co. Swainson's Hawk(s): Yup

[M & R Campbell]

Tom Snetsinger's Swainson's Hawk's were too tantalizingly close, so I took a long lunch and checked them out.  At 11:00 many large birds were hunting the newly mowed the fields north and south of Plainview (and between Manning and Sand Ridge Roads), many on the ground and quite a few in the air.  Most of those on the ground were, I think, Ravens, Crows, Vultures and Red Tails, but it was hard to tell because of the shimmer.  The group taking turns around the sky seemed to shrink to dots before I could get my scope set up, so picking out a dark phase Swainson's would have required an experienced hawk-watcher.  Fifteen or twenty minutes of searching the sky did turn up a slender buteo in an aerial joust with a raven, less than a half-mile away.  They were of roughly the same dimensions, but the Raven was by-far the stouter of the two.  The hawk had long wings, not blunt, a light belly, an unmemorable tail, dark primaries and secondaries and a light leading edge to the wing, a dark head, and a peculiar, blank, bill-less appearance that I attribute to a white face around a small bill.  I followed it for about three minutes at 20x, until it got rid of the Raven and began to kite with its wings extended and its tail tucked down.  When I stepped back to get an idea of how far away it was, the bird somehow disappeared--down to the ground, I guess.  I couldn't find it again, but I would call it a light morph SWAINSON'S HAWK--to make a pair with Tom's dark morph.  This is a bird I would never have picked out, or even noticed, if not for the scope and the "head's up" from Tom. 


While I'm at it, I should mention that Sunday morning there were about twenty LONG-BILLED DOWITCHERS at the Pioneer Villa sewage ponds, along with about eight LESSER YELLOWLEGS, and two RED-NECKED PHALAROPES.


Randy Campbell

Peoria


(As usual, all of these birds were found without the use of a motor.)





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