Swainson's Hawk - BirdForum Opus

Photo by coloshrike
Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado, USA, April 2006

Buteo swainsoni

Identification

48–56 cm (19-22 in)

• Dark brown upperparts
• Brown chest with dark "bib"
• White throat patch
• Pale belly.
  

A rufous morph is discussed in this thread.

Distribution

Western North America, wintering in Argentina, southern Brazil and Paraguay.

Juvenile
Photo by gophish
New Baltimore, New York, October 2009

Taxonomy

This is a monotypic species^[1].

Habitat

A wide variety of habitats including prairie and dry grasslands.

Behaviour

Breeding

They build a stick nest in a tree, shrub or on a cliff edge. The 1-4 white eggs are incubated by the female for 34-35 days.

Diet

Photo by Stanley Jones
Tritex Grass Farm, Bryan, Brazos County, Texas, USA, 4 October 2020

They have a very varied diet, which mostly consists of small mammals; rabbits, voles, bats etc in the breeding season, as well as some birds.

References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
2. Bechard, M. J., C. S. Houston, J. H. Saransola, and A. S. England (2020). Swainson's Hawk (Buteo swainsoni), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.swahaw.01

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2024) Swainson's Hawk. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 29 April 2024 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Swainson%27s_Hawk

External Links

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