Right OutsideWeek of October 11 · Calgary
← Everything happening this week
Swainson's hawk
Watching · Birds

Swainson's hawks are gathering

Typically Aug 5 to Sep 30Back next year

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
Open farmland and field edges
SourcesGBIF occurrence records within 200 km of Calgary, license-filtered (CC0/CC BY) and effort-normalized, Aug 2026

More happening around Calgary

tap for the full story
Warblers
Watching · Birds

Warblers are moving through

Small greenish birds are working through the willows and the garden shrubs right now, flicking...

First snow
Beginning · Weather

Snow before the leaves are down

The first snow of the year usually shows up while the trees still have most of their leaves...

Rough-legged hawk
Beginning · Birds

A new hawk on the post

The big hawk on the fence post is not the one that sat there all summer. The summer hawks have...

Hares
Beginning · Wildlife

The hares are turning white

Hares are swapping their brown summer coats for white ones, and for a few weeks they are a...

Deer
Beginning · Wildlife

Deer are on the move

Deer are turning up on roadsides and in ditches more than at any other time of year. It is the...

Snow geese
Peaking · Birds

Snow geese are passing over

If you hear a high, yelping chatter somewhere overhead, look up for long wavering lines of...

See everything we track around Calgary →
Photo: Carl Young · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Spotted an error? Report a correction