Wednesday in Wyoming - September 3, 2025

 

This month I thought I'd stay close to home, at least for my blog posts, and so I'm featuring Backyard Birds.

This Swainson's Hawk was a frequent visitor one summer, perhaps because there was a lot of food for him in the form of ground squirrels and baby bunnies. But one day instead of taking a bath in the birdbath, he washed his food. What was it? A slice of bread. You can imagine what happened when that went into the water.

Wednesday in Wyoming - August 23, 2023

 

Master of all I survey -- that's what I imagine this hawk was thinking as it perched on a pine tree. 

Wednesday in Wyoming -- August 8, 2018

It's one thing to have robins and sparrows bathing in the birdbath, but a Swainson's Hawk is a different story. Even though this one was a juvenile, he still had trouble fitting in the birdbath, yet he persisted.

A couple weeks later, he returned -- considerably larger than the prior visit -- and decided to do nothing more than drink. As you can imagine, the ground squirrels and bunnies were less excited about the hawk's presence than we humans were.