Swainson's Hawk

[brewbaker]

Took these outside of Gorman. Looked them up and they will travel in large groups migrating to South America. I have never seen anything like this. They were all standing in the middle of a cut field when I first saw them.

[AggieHunter]

Thats awesome! I've heard a lot about these migrations, but have yet to see one myself.

[Mark T]

Wow! That is alot of hawks! I bet the quail were freaking out.

[travlinman]

Cool. It's a wonderful site to see them catching thermals and then gliding out to the next thermal. This is the time of year for that to start happening.

[kenforu]

Cool pictures

[Froggy]

I've seen them landing in a pasture and each one has it's own territory. They looked evenly spaced sitting approximately 50 feet apart. I'm guessing they were resting.

Great pictures.

[BQ93]

Those groups are called "Kettles" of hawks. It's a frequent question on the falconry exam.

[sweldo73]

A few years ago, I saw a large group of hawks sitting in a field out toward Hempstead and it looked surreal. I guess this is what I saw.

[Hillary]

Wow.
That is a cool find.

[Curtis32]

I saw one a few years ago that I thought was vultures at first. There were hundreds of them in a long line for miles it seemed. They were so high up I thought for sure they were vultures until I got home and got out the binoculars and took a closer look. I called the local game warden about it and he said that it was hawks migrating.

[BQ93]

Some people will say I’m crazy, but Redtails do this sometimes as well. Normally they are very territorial and you only see mated pairs hanging out together, but if conditions are right there will be a ton of them. A few years ago north of Ft. Worth another falconer and I spotted at least 80 redtails hunting about a twenty acre field. There seemed to be plenty of food, so everyone kept to themselves. Now if the food runs out little redtails become food for BIG redtails.

Here’s my current BIG redtail.

[texag93]

Cool pics

[kdenhead]

Good stuff.

Cool Red Tail BQ!!

[justin156bc]

I had about 500 land in a field at the ranch about 5-6 years ago. I have video tape of it somewhere. Cool picture