Subject: TWEETERS digest 1616
Date: Jan 4 00:02:46 1999
From: Jack Bowling - jbowling at direct.ca


you wrote re. Swainson's Hawks:

>The existence of this wintering site, coupled with the fluctuation in
>the number of individuals, lends creedence to the speculation that there
>may be other roosting and foraging sites either in the Central Valley or
>elsewhere in California (recently, the closest known wintering site has
>been discovered near San Blas Mexico).
>
>Our request is that If someone is sitting on any North American
>"out-of-season" (late Nov. thru Feb.) Swainson's hawk observations from
>roughly the past decade (not already published in Am. Birds/Field Notes)
>it would be appreciated if they would share that information with:

Sorry for the delay in answering - I took an e-mail holiday over the
festive season. I don't have any winter records from my neck of the woods
in central BC for you; however, starting in the summer of 1992, a small
southbound passage of Swainson's Hawks began. There had been no record of
the species in the central interior since the 1940s.

They usually turn up in the last week of July or the first week of August
and trickle through up to the third week of August. Most birds are seen at
the P.G. Airport where they feed on the various mid-summer locust hatches
Color morph ratios seem much as you described for your Californian birds.
I bet if we could tag some of these birds, we would find that they are one
and the same.

Nobody knows for sure where these birds breed but my guess is SW
Yukon/extreme NW BC, and into eastern Alaska. A good mystery waiting to be
solved.

cheers,
Jack


---------------------------
Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jbowling at direct.ca