Each and every morning as I’m heading for the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge auto tour route my mind starts to ponder about what kind of birds and relatable stories I might encounter and photograph today.
Somedays the trips turn out pretty routine with a lot of common seasonal birds along the way but occasionally, however, today being a perfect example of this in fact, I stumble across a scene that’s pretty unique and quite unexpected, to say the least.
As I was driving down Forest Street early this morning, just after checking the new kestrel box for any activity, my attention was immediately grabbed by a large hawk that landed on one of the roadside fence posts a few hundred yards up ahead.
My first thought was this might be a possible red-tailed hawk sighting but as my car slowly approached the large raptor I quickly learned it wasn’t a red-tailed hawk at all but, surprisingly, it was a light morph Swainson’s hawk instead.
Needless to say, my plans to drive the auto loop today were, at the very least, immediately postponed while I took whatever time this particular Swainson’s hawk would give me and my camera this morning.
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From my personal experience, Swainson’s hawks, as a general guideline, are one of the more approachable species of raptors out there to view and photograph fairly close-up.
This particular hawk was certainly no exception to that rule as it regally stood on the wooden fence post, completely unphased my 600 mm camera lens was just a few short yards away taking pictures as the raptor unknowingly posed for me while its acute eyesight intently scanned the nearby landscape for an unsuspecting rodent scurrying in the short grasses below.
Occasionally, the large raptor would take a short flight and reposition itself on another fence post, still showing complete indifference, however, with me parked nearby on the quiet county road taking dozens of pictures of this most beautiful bird.
After about 20 minutes of hawk watching I decided I had all the photographs that were needed for a blog post and was about to restart my trip to the auto loop when the hawk unexpectedly lunged from its post, landing in the short vegetation just a few feet away.
To my surprise, it successfully caught a vole and immediately started to feed on the large rodent.
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Taking about 5 minutes to completely devour its prey, the hawk then flew up to one of the nearby fence posts and appeared to be scraping its beak on the wooden pole in what looked like an attempt to clean its mandible, shown by an image below, after the early morning meal.
Interestingly enough, although Swainson’s hawks are carnivores and prey on mammals such as rodents, gophers, rabbits, and ground squirrels as well as any available reptiles, including snakes and lizards, to feed their chicks during the breeding season, the rest of the year, however, they are quite opportunistic and mainly feed on large insects, including dragonflies, grasshoppers, butterflies, and beetles.
Swainson’s hawks are also quite adept at hunting in a variety of ways, including hovering in the air, perched on a post, and even on the ground as they run down prey on foot.
Although Swainson’s hawks are fairly common here in northern Utah during the summer months, I typically don’t see that many of them on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
As such, today’s sighting of not one but two Swainson’s hawks on Forest Street was quite unique in and of itself I would say.
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Maybe other birders see them more frequently on the refuge than I do, causing me to label my encounter today as unusual but not unheard of by any means.
Either way, common sighting or not, it was still quite a nice surprise to both watch and photograph a Swainson’s hawk on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge this morning as it hunted for and caught a vole while I sat nearby with my camera at the ready.
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