Hi Tweeters:
I hope I don't get banned from Tweeters for being a crank or a fraud. I THINK I saw a SWAINSON'S HAWK rapidly gliding south over Des Moines, WA, near Seatac Airport at 12:45pm, on Sun, Feb 2. I thought it was a Red-tailed Hawk until I looked w/ my bins. It had dark or black remiges (flight feathers), salmon-colored underparts, a dark tail (from underneath), and NO black petagial mark (black mark across leading edge of underside of wings. The leading parts of the underside of the wings looked light to me. The bird glided through fairly quickly going south. I'm sorry to say I didn't get on the head color. I was too surprised, I think.
We are located near the top of a bluff that leads from the Des Moines Creek area and goes south at about elevation 200 ft. We are east of Puget Sound about 1 mile. The flight path of planes from SeaTac airport taking off in southerly winds goes south over the bluff. The jets were doing that yesterday. We can have hawks or vultures using the area for migration routes. Yesterday, during a walk w/ clear skies and no wind, there were a number of raptors seen. Three Red-tails were interacting over Des Moines, and were not flying south. A Cooper's Hawk was hiding in a deciduous tree, and I got on it by observing an absolutely frozen robin on a telephone line. The robin did not move for at least 10 minutes, so I moved on. Several Bald Eagles including two adults, and a juv were spiraling and soaring up in the air over the bluff. They were at about the same height (approx. 800 feet in the air?) as the poss. Swainson's but they were not headed south, and then flew east.
The weather in the morning had been near freezing here and we had some fog, but by mid-morning the fog had cleared, the temp was in the mid 40's and with the sunshine the weather seemed quite warm. At the risk of seeming even more of a kook on Tweets, here is a possible theory for a Swainson's...
Our high pressure here that seems to have been in place for quite awhile brought in quite warm weather, especially up in elevation when there was the fog in the lowlands. The jet stream has been reaching up to northern Canada, and warm temps reached as far as Barrow, Alaska. The weather changed for a bit, and we received rain a few days ago, but now it looks like the high pressure is back with us.
In the meantime, Calif is in the midst of a drought. San Francisco rainfall was 5.59 inches of rainfall in 2013! Former record low was 9". Average is approx. 25 inches. There have been wildfires in Calif.
I know that most Swainson's should be in Argentina now eating insects. But could the very-few Swainson's Hawks that can over-winter in the areas north of Oakland be stressed? Could one of them have flown north, looking for insects or even rodents?
Yours, Carol Schulz
Des Moines, WA
(Not your usual kook with wild theories, but maybe cracking up or something.)