Buteo swainsoni
Swainson's hawk 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 and will voraciously eat these insects whenever they are available.

Dick Daniels ( https://theworldbirds.org/ ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Swainson's hawkPBDB
- Sits inside
- ButeoPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Accipitridae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Accipitridae
- Mass
- 1.11 kgWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 199 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 210 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Buteo swainsoni on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
8 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Buteo swainsoni and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Buteo swainsoni and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
315 taxa- Falco sparverius8 sites
- Accipiter cooperii7 sites
- Bubo virginianus7 sites
- Cathartes aura7 sites
- Gymnogyps californianus7 sites
- Antigone canadensis6 sites
- Aquila chrysaetos6 sites
- Falco columbarius6 sites
- Falco mexicanus6 sites
- Haliaeetus leucocephalus6 sites
- Teratornis merriami6 sites
- Ardea herodias5 sites
- Athene cunicularia5 sites
- Buteo jamaicensis5 sites
- Buteo regalis5 sites
- Callipepla californica5 sites
- Ciconia maltha5 sites
- Colaptes auratus cafer5 sites
- Coragyps occidentalis5 sites
- Corvus brachyrhynchos5 sites
- Corvus corax5 sites
- Falco peregrinus5 sites
- Neogyps errans5 sites
- Neophrontops americanus5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Buteo swainsoni, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- A comparison of avian assemblages from individual pits at Rancho La Brea, California2
- The fossil Birds of California2
- Avian community, climate, and sea-level changes in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Florida Peninsula1
- The avifauna associated with human remains at Rancho la Brea, California1
- The fauna of Burnet Cave, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico1
- Avifauna of the Pleistocene cave deposits of California1
Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Buteo swainsoni
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dick Daniels ( https://theworldbirds.org/ )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itButeo through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bonaparte 1838