Date: 8/27/25 9:38 pm From: Nikki Baumrind via groups.io <baumrind...> Subject: [centralvalleybirds] Swainsons Hawk Call Question — Davis
This evening around dusk, a single Swainsons Hawk flew low over my house in Davis making a call I had never heard before, and couldn’t find online. The call sounded to me as if it might have been a distress call - it was definitely not the usual Swainsons call. I am an inexperienced birder and do not know how to identify age or sex in these birds. A pair nests regularly in my neighbor’s tree, and they had at least one offspring this season. I have not been watching the nest closely, so don’t know if the adults are still here.
Is it possible that this was a juvenile whose parents just left for migration without him, and the call was in response to being left behind for the winter? Have other people heard possible distress calls like this around migration time?
