Southbound Swainson's Hawks

BirdNote^®

Swainson’s Southbound Migration -
From an interview of members Of
The HawkWatch team at Manzano Mt, NM

Written up by Chris Peterson

This is BirdNote!
 [Sound of wind]
 In September, we stood at 9,000 feet, in the Manzano Range in New Mexico, watching for raptors making their way south along the Rocky Mountain front. Some, like Swainson’s Hawks, fly all the way to the pampas of Argentina. We joined five young people from HawkWatch International who are counting the birds as they pass overhead. Mandy Weston describes:

G1T11 0:40   So three days ago we had a group of about 2500 Swainson’s Hawks move through in less than two hours.  They started all the way over there, past where those twin peaks are there and they just formed these giant… kettles, these big columns, with 200 birds in each one and they were just circling around and around…. It was amazing; like anywhere you looked with your binoculars you were seeing Swainson’s Hawks.

 Swainson’s Hawks eat small rodents that live in open habitats provided by farmlands. But they also eat grasshoppers. So, integrated pest management programs that limit the use of pesticides are important for their survival.   
 [Call of Swainson’s Hawk]
Mandy and her colleagues are providing valuable information about the trends in the populations of these raptors, and others. 
[Call of Swainson’s Hawk]
You can learn more about HawkWatch International, and help celebrate their upcoming anniversary, by visiting our website, birdnote.org. [Alt line: You can learn more about HawkWatch International by visiting our website, birdnote.org.]
 [Call of Swainson’s Hawk and bring up the wind]
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Call of Swainson’s Hawk provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, recorded by R.S. Little.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2010 Tune In to Nature.org            December 2010    Narrator: Mary McCann

ID# SoTB-hawkwatch-01-2010-12-16