15 hawks flying circles above our neighborhood

It's quite common to see solitary hawks flying around our area, usually see at least one a day. I was just in the backyard and looked up to see 15 hawks circling above our neighborhood. What's up with that? It was really quite disturbing. Hope everyone has their cats and little dogs inside today.

They are cool birds but I've rarely seen more than a pair at a time unless I'm hiking in the mountains.

Kicking in hopes that one of the real birders shows up with the answer.

They might have been Harris's Hawks or Zone-Tailed Hawks. I gotta admit that I'm pretty clueless about identifying birds. Hell, they coulda been falcons for all I know.

Its called a "kettle"
http://www.wildwnc.org/education/naturalists-notes/a-kettle-of-hawks

A little early for migration but thats what it sounds like...
And generally hawks are not dangerous to house pets..Eagles and Owls and some Vultures are though.

A friend of mine had her cat snatched off their deck by a big ass owl a couple years ago. They're still traumatized.

I think hawks will do that when they're migrating too.

And I watched them for about 10 minutes... they just drifted off still in their circling pattern. Watched a couple break off and fly lower over the houses and then fly back to the group.

Two will circle and move from south to north, then shortly after another two do the same thing. Sometimes we'll be able to see all 4 at the same time.

I really enjoy watching the birds around here. Even had a roadrunner run through our backyard a few days ago. We had doves build a nest at the end of our front porch and they were quite comfortable around us. We've had tons of twohees around here too....and very loud and squeaky hummingbirds. My favorite are the quails though. They are hilarious to watch. This morning saw Mom and Dad quail and their 3 little ones walking through the yard...all in perfect alignment.

Hawks are solitary. Those are turkey buzzards. And hawks don't normally ride thermals. They like to be perched. Hawks don't like being out in the open where they can be mobbed by other birds.

I see them doing it all the time, and especially in migration. Raptor migration is just starting at this time of the year, so some species are already starting to cluster together to get ready. One of the most amazing things I've seen is thousands of hawks at Brockway Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during spring migration - the sky was full of hawks!

Here's a link to the Hawk Mountain autumn migration results for last year (note the species total on 9/11):
http://data.hawkmountain.org/cgi-bin/count/viewdata.cgi

See for example this image of a kettle of migrating Broad-winged Hawks:

Like Hawk Mountain or Cape May, but it's not common. Accipiters are forest dwellers, and like I said, most hawks for most of their lives are solitary.

The poster said they were too small for Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures do travel in largish groups.

This has forced me to crack some of my guide books. I have been of the belief that hawks don't gather in in groups of larger that two or three except in places like Cape May.

The only place I've ever seen a large kettle is in Cape May..I have seen a smaller kettle of about 5-6 hawks here in Maryland though.

After the chicks have fledged and they are kind of hanging out in the same area for a little while.

I do only see single hawks on the fence posts and when they'd swipe birds from my feeders. I just assumed those couples that flew in circles were hawks, they're not as dark as the turkey vultures. We do have a lot of eagles in the area but I've only seen them alone when flying.

and a little head. They are all diurnal raptors as opposed to the nocturnal raptors, owls. From eagles, to turkey vultures to hawks to ospreys to falcons, these are all diurnal raptors. "Hawk" is kind of a generalized term that people use to describe several different raptors when they are unsure of the species. What most people think of as true hawks fall under the genus Buteo and the genus Accipiter. Accipiters are the smaller forest dwelling type of hawk and Buteos are the Broad Shouldered and Red Tailed varieties. Classically the Buteos are known as "buzzards" which further confuses things. Then you have kites, goshawks, and harriers to even further confuse things.

I never realized there were so many raptors. I've met a few turkey vultures up pretty close. Ugly faces. Their wing span covered my entire car windshield. They like to have stare downs when they are protecting their roadkill meal in the middle of some of these country roads. I've on more than one occasion had to stop, honk, wait, inch forward, repeat, all the while being glared at.

Thank you for the information. I went looking for pics and found this site:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/id#similar

I've never heard of most of them. Everything was always just a hawk.

Of course accipters only ride thermals in migration, since they are forest species. But Buteos ride thermals daily. You can go out any day and see Red-tailed Hawks riding thermals. Why wouldn't they, since it's an excellent way to both conserve energy and observe their territory?

Hawks are not at all uncommon up here in the high desert. I've seen 2 together before, but nothing like this. And it was easy to count how many there were. It was ominous....noticed a lot of little birds flying overhead AWAY from the hawks...that's what first drew my eyes upwards.

Just doing big lazy circles....they were stacked up like airplanes waiting to land...LOL....the only ones I really saw flapping were the couple that broke away from the group to glide over the houses must closer to the ground. I feel very confident that they were not turkey buzzards....these were hawks, we see them all the time around here. It's hard to miss what their wings look like in a glide.

Buteos - Red-tailed hawk, Broad-winged hawk, Rough-legged hawk, Red-shouldered hawk - large hawks, soar a lot

Accipiters - Sharp-shinned hawk, Cooper's hawk - small to large hawks, alternate flaps with glides

If they soared continuously then they were vultures/buzzards - rarely beat wings - can soar for hours in thermals


It is cool that you got to see them! I love to watch birds.

Check out the Birders Group on DU if you haven't already.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=294

must be a corpse around

It would be very difficult to confuse a buzzard for a hawk. They don't look anything alike. I know what a hawk looks like, they're quite common here and one flew over the house no more than 50 ft away. They weren't buzzards. They did not continue to fly over one specific area but drifted with what I assume to be the direction of the thermals.

I hate to break it to you, but zoneys are almost identical to Turkey Vultures.

Did these birds have any white or lighter areas on them, or were they all dark?

When I went through the identification thingy on whatbird.com and the Harris's Hawk and the Zone-tail were the last couple that showed up based on my description and locations etc.....I included the zone-tail because of the picture of it's wings http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/522/overview/Zone-tailed_Hawk.aspx the way they kinda fan out at the ends. I could see the shape of their heads very clearly....hawks, not buzzards. Hard to mix those two up I'd think. They're darker brown. It's not that they were hawks that interested me...I'm absolutely positive they were, it's the behavior. Never seen them in that number.

I took these last year. The birds were flying almost exactly as you described.
I thought they were hawks until they got closer

Some of them were quite high, but as I said upthread one flew very close to my yard. It was just a plain, everyday hawk.

You do live in the Philippines, don/t you?

Don't you have a door to answer nekkid?;)

Did I miss the start of Happy Hour again?