Swainson's hawk

Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni), is a large Buteo hawk of the Falconiformes, sometimes separated in the Accipitriformes like its relatives. This species was named after William Swainson, a British naturalist. It is colloquially known as the grasshopper hawk or locust hawk, as it is very fond of Acrididae (locusts and grasshoppers) and will voraciously eat these insects whenever they are available. Their breeding habitat is prairie and dry grasslands in western North America. They build a stick nest in a tree or shrub or on a cliff edge. This species is a long-distance migrant, wintering in Argentina; it has been recorded as a vagrant in neighboring Chile, in the island countries of the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago, and in Norway. This species or its immediate predecessor is the ancestor of the Galápagos hawk, as demonstrated by recent research. The latter diverged from the mainland birds perhaps 300,000 years ago, a very short time in evolution. Swainson's hawk is a raptor and a medium-sized member of the genus Buteo. It broadly overlaps in size with the red-tailed hawk (B. jamaicensis), a related species found as a breeding resident almost throughout North America. Swainson's hawk is on average a little shorter in length, 43–56 cm (17–22 in) long, and weighs a bit less, 0.5–1.7 kg (1.1–3.7 lb). However, Swainson's hawk has a slightly longer wingspan at 117–137 cm (46–54 in), with more slender, elongated wings, than the red-tailed hawk. Female Swainson's hawks, at an average weight of 1.15 kg (2.5 lb), are somewhat larger and heavier than males, at an average of 0.81 kg (1.8 lb). Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 36.2–42.7 cm (14.3–16.8 in), the tail is 18.5–23.4 cm (7.3–9.2 in), the tarsus is 6.2–8 cm (2.4–3.1 in) and the bill (from the gape) is 3–3.5 cm (1.2–1.4 in). In flight, Swainson's hawk holds its wings in a slight dihedral; it tips back and forth slightly while soaring. There are two main color variations. Over 90% of individuals are light-morph; the dark morph is most common in the far west of the range: Swainson's hawk inhabits North America mainly in the spring and summer and winters in South America. Breeding areas include south-central Alberta, central Saskatchewan, southwestern Manitoba, and west and southern Minnesota. They will breed as far north as east-central Alaska, and southwestern Yukon. Breeding continues south through the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon, locally to the central valley of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and most of Texas. The eastern part of its range includes Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, most of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and all but eastern Texas. It periodically occurs in Iowa and rarely in northwestern Missouri, northern Illinois, and southwestern Wisconsin. Small populations winter in southeastern Florida and along the Texas coast, probably having failed to find the way south around the Gulf of Mexico. Individuals reported north of these areas in winter (for example, on Christmas Bird Counts) are almost invariably misidentified buteos of other species. Immature Swainson's hawks winter on the pampas of South America in Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. It is not known with certainty where most of the adults spend the winter.