November 2, 2008 - South Dakota Hawks and Scenery

Red-tailed Hawks are the most widespread and familiar hawk of North America. They are often seen perching on roadside poles. They are year-round residents all across the United States and in the summer they are also found across most of Canada. They eat small mammals, birds, and reptiles. They often hunt by perching high on a pole or a tree and then swooping down upon their potential prey.

We were driving around in the Black Hills when we spotted this bird sitting in a tree right near the road. We pulled into a parking area next to the tree. The hawk was so intent on looking for a meal that it ignored us and I was able to get some nice photos.

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Ferruginous Hawks are the largest hawks found in the United States. Their range is the western half of the U.S. in open, dry country. They hunt by soaring across the plains and then swooping down to catch medium-sized mammals like ground squirrels, pocket gophers, young jackrabbits, and prairie dogs. This is a light morph Ferruginous Hawk. We were driving by a Prairie Dog town in the Badlands. The hawk was on the ground and only about 30 feet from the road. We stopped and discovered that, by staying in our car, it didn’t see us as a threat. It was concentrating on eating the Prairie Dog it had caught.

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This dark morph Ferruginous Hawk was only about 30 feet from the hawk in the last photo. Both of them had been successful in catching Prairie Dogs. The Latin name for Ferruginous Hawk is Buteo regalis which means kingly or royal. I think these two hawks really live up to that name.

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This is one of the colorful scenes from the Badlands. The formation is called the Yellow Mounds. The various hues came from the build up of different kinds of sediment over the geologic history of the Badlands.

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