Right OutsideUpdated Aug 16 · Calgary
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Swainson's hawk
Beginning · Birds

Swainson's hawks are gathering

Building nowbiggest kettles through September

Southern Alberta's summer hawk is starting to flock up. Before leaving, Swainson's hawks switch to a grasshopper diet and gather on fence lines and fresh-cut fields, stocking up for one of the longest migrations of any raptor: roughly 10,000 km to the grasslands of Argentina. Over the next few weeks the groups grow into swirling kettles. Then, one day in September, the sky is simply empty of them.

Dark-bibbed hawks perched every few fence posts
Mid-morning through afternoon
any drive east or south of the city
SourcesGBIF occurrence records within 200 km of Calgary, license-filtered (CC0/CC BY) and effort-normalized, Aug 2026
Photo: Carl Young · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
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