Swainson's Hawk Watch: Neighbor calls to report seeing Hawks in Perching Tree

Welcome to the Swainson's Hawk Watch

In April of 2010, a pair of wild Swainson's Hawks decided to nest in our neighborhood in Boise, Idaho. This "Hawk Watch" will attempt to record words and photographs describing the Hawks behaviors, including the hatching & fledgling of chicks over the spring and summer. Many others who live in the neighborhood also watched the daily activities of the hawks and used this blog to keep up on my own observations and photographs.

Note! May 6, 2011 Two Red-Tailed Hawks have settled on the old nest and appear to be laying on eggs now. See blog posts below.

Note! On March 12, 2011 two neighbors reported seeing a single hawk flying around and landing on the nest. Hopefully they will nest here again or nearby and we can continue the blog through 2011.

Note! Please Try to "Follow" the Blog and check in often. I am trying to update this site and the photo album at least once or twice a week. This page scrolls down to the blog entries below this introduction. The first blog entry you will see is the latest one. Scrolling the page down will reveal earlier posts in descending chronological order. And/or you can use the Blog Archive on the right side of the screen to see entries for May, through October 2010 and newer ones for 2011.

Please feel free to share this Blog with your family and friends. The URL you can email to them is:

http://swainsonshawkwatch.blogspot.com

Note ! I am posting "all" of the hawk images to an album in my Picasa Web account. Below is the web URL for that album. You can click on that hot link and/or also click on the Hawk lifting off branch photo to go to that album. As of October 3, there are 600 individual images in the album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/gogrimm/SwainsonSHawksNesting#

Note! When looking at a single photo in the album use the "full screen" icon for a larger, more impressive size!

Monday, August 23, 2010

Neighbor calls to report seeing Hawks in Perching Tree

Last night a neighbor who lives close to the perching tree with no leaves on top said she had seen two hawks in the tree earlier on Sunday afternoon. I asked her to call me by phone if she saw any hawks in the tree again. About sunset she called and said one hawk had returned. I was able to shoot a few shots of the young hawk and a few minutes of video just at sunset. Look closely a the first photo below and you will see the hawk is standing on one foot. The hawk flew while I had the video camera running and I will try to post this video as time permits.

This morning the neighbor called again reporting a hawk in the tree. I had been shooting still photos of the final stages of the Straw Bale house construction, so I rode my bike over and was able to get a couple of shots of the young hawk in the tree. It was making some screeching sounds so I decided to hurry back home to get the HD video camera with a good directional microphone to see if I could capture this sound. Unfortunately the hawk was gone by the time I returned. I went past the hay field too but did not see any hawks there. I will try to carry the video camera a microphone in the next few days to try to catch the sound these young hawks make while they are perching.