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.

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

Hawk lifting off branch

Sunday, June 13, 2010

New Hawk Chick

Last evening I finally saw one of the hawk chicks in the nest lift its head up in front of the parent hawk (female).  This is the best photo I was able to take, but I have a few others where the chick is moving its head around and up and down.   
Click on the photo above to see it in a larger view.

A short time later the other parent hawk, probably the male flew by with what looked like a starling in its feet.  He landed on a power pole down the street and I started to walk down to photograph him, but, he was gone when I got there.  When I walked back to the nest the female(?) was feeding this chick and I assume the male brought the meal back and left again.  However, this happened so fas that I did not see it.  I took photos of the parent feeding what I assume was this chick and it looked like it was also putting food down at another spot in the nest.  I never did see another chick, but there may be one or two more.  As a few more days go by we should be able to see others as they also poke their head up to look around.

As time permits I will upload additional photos to the Picasa photo album I have taken this past week.including those of one of the hawks hunting in the hay field a few blocks away.

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