Red-tailed Hawk,Buteo jamaicensis.
Common permanent resident in open country throughout the region that is most numerous during the period of cold weather,
November through February. An unusual concentration of 50 birds was seen in a field near Fayetteville on February 12, 1982.
Nesting gets underway in March. Transients and wintering birds show extreme variability in plumage, ranging from the very
light birds to those that are almost
totally black. Harlan's Hawk, a dark subspecies of the Red-tailed Hawk, is fairly common in the region
during winter, and is sometimes misidentified as the Roughlegged Hawk. An important research paper on
Harlan's Hawk (Wood 1932) was based in large part on specimens caught with pole traps by poultry farmers
in northwest Arkansas in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Another dark subspecies of the Redtailed Hawk
occurs in the region in winter, the western Red-tailed Hawk.
Swainson's Hawk,Buteo swainsoni.
March 27 to May 28+ and September 8 to October 5. Uncommon migrant, rare summer resident. Two individuals were observed
repeatedly in 1969 at Centerton between June 8 and September 9. A single bird was seen at Fayetteville June 14, 1985.
This bird appears regularly during both spring and fall migration, though always in small numbers. During the sumaer of
1986, 1-2 birds were seen in the Bentonville Centerton area. Also in 1986, a pair built a nest seven miles west of
Fayetteville, but no young were reared in the nest. Additional summer sightings have occurred in 1987 and 1988, primarily
in Benton County.