Photo Study Of A Swainson's Hawk, Cattle Egrets and Other Birds In Delaware, October 29th, 2010

    Ed Norman and I went to Delaware to try and find the Swainson's Hawk that had been reported at Fowler's Beach this week. We found it and here are some of Ed's
    photographs of this beautiful bird:

    The Swainson's Hawk (Buteo swainsoni) is a slender bird of prey with a relatively long tail and pointed wings. It is 19 inches long with a 51 inch wingspan. This prairie buteo
    lives in the western part of the United States and Canada, where it hunts insects and small mammals in grassland. Our particular extralimital visitor is an "intermediate morph"
    juvenile. It has been seen running around this past week hunting grasshoppers in a newly harvested soybean field near Fowler's Beach. The Swainson's Hawk is our longest
    distance migrating raptor. It flies from its breeding grounds in North America to winter in the South American Pampas of southern Brazil or Argentina. Each migration
    can last two months or more and can be as much as 14,000 miles long.  (Cornell BNA;Wikipedia; Sibley's Guide To Birds)

    In November of 2009, a light morph juvenile Swainson's Hawk visited Cape May and I was able to photograph the bird in a tree adjacent to a field full of grasshoppers.
    The images below are shown for comparison:

    Also, the Radar reports for the past two days indicate that there has been a huge movement of migrating birds into Delaware. We were able to visit the Hawk Watch at
    Cape Henlopen State Park, Fowler's Beach, Port Mahon Ditch and Bombay Hook NWR.  We were not disappointed.

    Species seen:

    To see a larger image of any of the photos below, please click on either the thumbnails or the captions...thanks!

 Howard B. Eskin 2010       Please email your comments to hbeskin@voicenet.com      Please click here to go back to Bird Webpage Index