Swainson's hawk

Swainson's hawk
Male in California, USA
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Accipitriformes
Family: Accipitridae
Genus: Buteo
Species:
B. swainsoni
Binomial name
Buteo swainsoni
Bonaparte, 1838
Distribution of Swainson's Hawk
Synonyms

Buteo swainsonii (lapsus)

Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni) is a large bird species in the Accipitriformes order. 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.[1]

This species or its immediate predecessor is the ancestor of the Galápagos hawk, as demonstrated by recent research. Then later diverged from the mainland birds perhaps 300,000 years ago, a very short time in evolution.[2]

  1. ^ a b BirdLife International (2016). "Buteo swainsoni". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016: e.T22695903A93533217. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22695903A93533217.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bollmer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).