A Migratory Sit

Last Saturday was International Migratory Bird day, so a few of us decided to mark the occasion with a Big Sit at the local bird sanctuary.

For those of you not familiar with this concept, bird watchers sit in a 17 ft circle with your chairs facing out. If you see a bird when you’re in the circle you can get up and go get a closer view, but to be counted, the bird has to be seen from within the circle.

The forecast was for a balmy 20C, but it neglected to mention the howling winds. Arriving at 8:00 am, we started our sit on the banks of the Bow River, and it turned into a Big Stand as we had to keep walking around to stay warm.

Even the birds were joining in our event.

We managed to tally 24 birds in this location, then we gave in and moved to a more sheltered location where we picked up 5 more.

On the move from one location to another, we noticed a dark morph Swainson’s hawk sitting on the ground, about 10 feet from the path. One of the sanctuary volunteers had mentioned this bird about an hour before, and we were a little concerned to see him still sitting there. He had a Richardson’s ground squirrel in his talons.

He never moved as we stood watching him, and he wasn’t eating his catch either. Moving around to the back a bit, we noticed his left wing seemed to be hanging down in an unusual position. At this point, Bob phoned the local wildlife rehab centre.

They told him that Swainson’s hawks are known for sitting on the ground, sometimes for hours, and that they are always getting calls about hawks sitting in ditches.

This was news to all of us. I spent a great deal of time on the weekend researching, and could not find any mention of this behaviour anywhere. I’ll be contacting some hawk biologists this week, as I don’t understand why a bird would so anything that would leave him so exposed to predation. If any of my readers knows anything about this, please leave a comment below.

When we finally left the sanctuary, he was eating his gopher. Perhaps he was just joining in the spirit of our Big Sit after all.

Species Seen

• Canada goose
• American wigeon
• Mallard
• Common goldeneye
• Common merganser
• Double-crested cormorant
• Osprey
• Swainson’s hawk
• Merlin
• Spotted sandpiper
• Franklin’s gull
• Rock pigeon
• Belted kingfisher
• Northern flicker
• American crow
• Common raven
• Tree swallow
• Northern rough-winged swallow
• European starling
• Yellow-rumped warbler
• Song sparrow (heard 5 minutes before 8 a.m)
• Red-winged blackbird
• Common grackle
• Brown-headed cowbird
• Cooper’s hawk
• Red-tailed hawk
• Black-capped chickadee
• Chipping sparrow
• House finch

There were also some good birds from outside the circles. Right after we called it a morning, an American kestrel showed up. We also saw white-crowned sparrow, white-throated sparrow, house wren, warbling vireo, northern pintail and barn swallow.

Note:

For another post on this Swainson’s hawk, see the Birds Calgary blog. This blog is written by three local birders, including myself, and this post was done by our 13 year old birding whiz kid. He’s taken to blogging like a duck takes to water, and his photographs are as excellent as his writing.