{"id":157447,"date":"2024-04-19T05:26:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T11:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=157447"},"modified":"2024-04-19T08:02:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T14:02:54","slug":"my-first-of-year-foy-swainsons-hawks-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/19\/my-first-of-year-foy-swainsons-hawks-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Of Year (FOY) Swainson’s Hawks Yesterday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

And Swainson’s Hawks weren’t my only first of year birds yesterday. I had two others. So it was a banner day for me, even though most of my photos were only of documentary quality and one of them bordered on atrocious because it was soft and the bird was far away. But that photo is plenty good enough for positive ID.<\/p>\n

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8:24 AM: When I first spotted this hawk on a utility pole in front of me in Utah’s west desert I assumed it was a Red-tailed Hawk but as I drove slowly forward I began to suspect it was my FOY Swainson’s Hawk. It turned out that my suspicion was correct.<\/p>\n

As I was approaching the bird, what surprised me even more was that it appeared to be a female in solicitation posture (with her head down and her body held horizontally) but there was no male in sight. I’ve seen mating behavior in Swainson’s Hawks and other buteos many times so I recognize solicitation posture when I see it. But where was the male, her presumed mate? She had to be soliciting someone and it certainly wasn’t me.<\/p>\n

By the time I got my pickup stopped and my lens on her she was standing more erect, as we see here. She never did look back at me, not once, which was unusual. She was concentrating on something other than me.<\/p>\n

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Suddenly the reason for her solicitation posture became clear. A male, her presumed mate, appeared in the upper left corner of the frame and landed next to her. I figured they were about to mate, which was obviously her intention.<\/p>\n

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But it didn’t happen. The male, who may have been distracted by my pickup, showed no interest in mounting her so eventually she flew off to my right. Which left me disappointed to have missed the mating but delighted to have seen and photographed my FOY Swainson’s Hawks.<\/p>\n

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Six minutes later and a couple of miles down the road I found another Swainson’s Hawk with its back to me and on the wrong side of the road for good light.<\/p>\n

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32 minutes after that I found a fourth Swainson’s Hawk, a dark morph I believe, perched in a faraway tree. I may have seen two others from a distance but they were too far away for a positive ID.<\/p>\n

I must have found a pocket of migrating Swainson’s Hawks but I believe those first two hawks are now resident in the area and based on their behavior, intending to nest in a clump of trees on the other side of the road.<\/p>\n

Swainson’s Hawks weren’t my only FOY birds yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

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8:37 AM: I spotted a faraway Turkey Vulture circling in the morning updrafts. Shooting out my window, the vulture was at a difficult angle for me so my photos were soft but this one is good enough for positive ID. It’s my FOY Turkey Vulture and the only one I saw all morning.<\/p>\n

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8:54 AM: I also photographed my FOY Willets. These two were noisily flying in circles and displaying as they landed. I’ve been hearing Willets on Antelope Island for a about a week now but these two were the first ones I’ve actually seen this year.<\/p>\n

Three FOY bird species in exactly 30 minutes. For me that’s a new record. To quote Andy Williams, who was referring to a different season, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”.<\/p>\n

You’re welcome for the earworm.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And Swainson’s Hawks weren’t my only first birds of the year yesterday. I had two others. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,391,645,910,343],"tags":[7422,1014,473,646,911,311,533,327],"class_list":["post-157447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-swainsons-hawks","category-turkey-vultures","category-willets","tag-in-birding-what-does-foy-mean","tag-mating-behavior","tag-solicitation-posture","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-turkey-vulture","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/swainsons-hawk-3225-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-EXt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157447"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157520,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157447\/revisions\/157520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}