At 2:15 this afternoon, I personally received a message from Argentina. The Southern Hemisphere has ceded the sun's direct radiation to the Northern Hemisphere; in other words, we in the Northern Hemisphere have now moved past the vernal equinox.
The carrier of that message was a Swainson's hawk, the first I have observed this year. Soaring above our Littleton farm, the hawk had left the Argentinian autumn and traveled to the North American spring. He and his cohorts will nest across the High Plains, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin provinces before heading back to Argentina next fall. There they will "winter" in the Argentinian summer.
Favoring open country with scattered trees in which to perch and nest, Swainson's hawks feed on a variety of large insects, reptiles and small mammals and are often observed soaring above crop fields and grasslands. Today's lone traveler was the first but I will surely observe dozens (if not hundreds) of these migrant raptors over the next six months.
The carrier of that message was a Swainson's hawk, the first I have observed this year. Soaring above our Littleton farm, the hawk had left the Argentinian autumn and traveled to the North American spring. He and his cohorts will nest across the High Plains, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin provinces before heading back to Argentina next fall. There they will "winter" in the Argentinian summer.
Favoring open country with scattered trees in which to perch and nest, Swainson's hawks feed on a variety of large insects, reptiles and small mammals and are often observed soaring above crop fields and grasslands. Today's lone traveler was the first but I will surely observe dozens (if not hundreds) of these migrant raptors over the next six months.
