Jeremy and Marv,

Quite a few years ago I was quite amazed to see an immature Swainson's Hawk near Reifel Refuge in southern BC late in fall, I think late November. Like you, I knew it was rare west of the Cascades and shouldn't be around in winter.

I did some checking and found that people associated with the refuge had raised a nestful (several birds) of orphaned Swainson's Hawk chicks (from interior BC) through the summer and had just released them! I have no idea what happened to those birds, in a place and season to which they weren't really adapted. I suspected their chances of survival weren't high.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing is something to keep in mind when we see any bird out of range and/or season. We routinely treat exotic waterfowl in the wild as obviously escaped or released from captivity, but it's harder to reach such a conclusion with a native species.

Dennis
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



On Mar 1, 2011, at 12:05 PM, tweeters-request at mailman2.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:54:27 -0800 (PST)
> From: Jeremy Kimm <vanislebirder at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Tweeters] RFI - Recent Swainsons Hawk, Washington
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Message-ID: <571572.88128.qm at web113820.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi All,
>
> I have heard that there was a somewhat recent Washington state sighting of
> Swainson's Hawk, and was wondering if anyone had some more information on it.
>
> I had one in Victoria a few days ago, and am puzzling over the origin, due to a
> combination of early date, and the fact that this species is almost unheard of
> in captivity in British Columbia (one or two individuals).
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated,
>
> Jeremy Kimm
> Victoria, BC




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