Well, it finally happened

Swainson's Hawk, nemesis no longer.

To say that I've wanted to see a Swainson's Hawk in Connecticut for a long time is one way to put it. But that does not tell the whole story. There are nemesis birds and there are nemesis birds. This was unequivocally the latter.

Over the past 25 years, most of which I have spent as a resident of Connecticut, I shudder to think about how many hours I have spent watching the local skies for raptors during fall migration. Though at first glance hawkwatching appears to be perhaps the most passive form of birding, it is actually a grind of constant sky-scanning, often against bright blue skies that cloak high-flying birds shockingly well. Even when a group of observers are present, with folks looking in all directions, it is easy to miss birds if you aren't paying close attention. Great focus is required. This energy can be difficult to maintain in practice, especially when the wind chill is frigid or if you are trying not to be rude in the presence of other birders, which can be a real challenge at established hawk watches where observers congregate and you're bound to run into old friends. It's not all serious all the time, though. The beauty of the practice is that you can take a break to blink your eyes, sit down, eat a sandwich, and crack a beer...all without having to completely to stop birding.

Over these past couple decades, having put so much time and energy into autumn hawkwatching, I should have seen a Swainson's Hawk in the state by now. It is a species I know well from my travels. It is distinctive even from a distance. I'd like to think that if I had laid eyes on one before today, I would have known it. Knowing all this, each year that passed without spotting a Swainson's bothered me a bit more. Even over the past four years, as my time spent in the field has fallen off a cliff and birding has taken up less and less of my headspace, my desire to get this monkey off my back has not wavered.

It's not like I haven't come close before. There was the October day years ago I decided last second to skip a visit to Lighthouse Point because winds were too light, so I thought. That was the first miss. More recently, in early October 2019 I had to leave Lighthouse in the middle of a fantastic flight to make dinner obligations out of state, and one came through an hour or so later. And just last November I was fishing in the harbor when one passed through Lighthouse, but word did not get out until too late for me to have a shot at seeing that one, even though I was within a half mile of the bird at the time. Oops!

Julian Hough (AKA one of my many Swainson's-gripping friends) had organized a few buddies to meet this morning at Ecology Park, a coastal site that lies about 6 miles east of Lighthouse Point and a half-mile inland atop a capped landfill turned into town park. The views from atop this hill are fantastic, and the hawk flights here can be great on the right day.

Today's northwest winds were blowing at a solid 10-15mph from the northwest, exactly what you want for a hawk flight. This is a bit of a strange air mass though, as a howling NW wind in mid-November usually means unseasonably cold air pumping in from Canada. Today's high temps reached into the 60s, not the upper 40s with a frigid wind chill as you'd expect for the date. Given the warm temps and the fact that we are past the peak of the raptor migration, I was unsure what to expect.

I arrived on site at 0830 to find the sharp-eyed David Mathieu already standing watch. He had been there since 0700 and noted a light landbird flight was ongoing but the hawks had not started moving yet. Soon joined by Julian Hough and Sean Williams, we were having a good old time. A female Northern Harrier made a close pass in perfect light. There was a steady enough flight of finches and blackbirds to keep us on our toes. A few raptors got up...some local, some migrating. Sharpies, Coops, Bald Eagles, a couple falcons. Right around 0900 I got on a bird while scanning with bins that immediately raised the heart rate with its dihedral and pointy wings, a combination that should make you consider Swainson's. I blurted out to the group with trembling urgency the location of the bird and scoped it. It broke into a soar and sure enough this candidate was the real thing. I let out several curse words, and I wasn't the only one. Dan Errichetti's timing couldn't have been better; he arrived as we were watching it just moments after spotting it.

The bird continued southward until it hit the coast and then moved west, just as any migrating raptor would, so we anticipated it would keep going. Surprisingly it did not. It lingered to our south for nearly an hour, flying back and forth. It never came very close, and the light was actually quite poor for most of the observation, but we enjoyed decent scope views of this well-marked juvenile light morph Swainson's Hawk. It showed the classic two-toned underparts with cream-colored wing linings and dark flight feathers. Its dihedral was significant and its wingtips always tapered, even in full soar. At one point it was escorted/harassed by a Harrier which made for a fascinating direct structural comparison.

At one point the hawk continued westward and we thought it was really gone this time, but it doubled back east and eventually back north/northeastward, from where it came earlier in the morning. In all we had that bird in near constant sight for about an hour and a half. Wild!

I knew it would happen eventually. It had to. And this is exactly how I wanted it to play out. Nothing twitched. No recent sightings to our north. And not that Swainson's Hawk is ever expected, but I certainly wasn't anticipating one during a light flight in mid-November. It really came out of the blue.

I've long joked with the Lighthouse Point crowd that they'll never have to see my face again once I get my CT Swainson's Hawk. The truth is that I'll still spend time there, but forgive me if the intensity of my focus wanes a bit after today.

Not the best photo of a Swainson's Hawk, but sufficient documentation.

Morning view looking North from the top of Ecology Park

female Northern Harrier

- NB