Swainson's Hawk

About the Swainson's Hawk

A graceful, long-winged hawk of open country, the Swainson's Hawk is typically brown above with a clean dark chest band - like a bib - over pale underparts, though the species is variable and dark birds occur. In flight its wings are long and pointed for a buteo, held in a shallow V as it soars.

Swainson's Hawks are birds of the grasslands and farmland, often seen perched on fence posts and power poles or walking the ground after grasshoppers, which they gather to feed on in freshly worked fields. In Texas they breed through the warm months, hunting the open plains and ranch country.

Then comes the spectacle: each fall Swainson's Hawks gather into enormous swirling flocks, or kettles, sometimes numbering in the thousands, and stream south on one of the longest migrations of any raptor - all the way to the pampas of Argentina.

A note from behind the lens: perched birds on roadside poles offer clean portraits, but the real drama is a fall kettle boiling up on a thermal. Expose for the sky, find a pattern in the swirl, and try to convey the sheer numbers overhead.