[bristol-birds] Red-shouldereds on territory?

  • From: Wallace Coffey <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: 1-A Bristol-Birds <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 23:21:44 -0400

Friday (3/8) in Holston Valley, just off U.S. 421, in
Sullivan County, TN,  I found a very noisy and active
Red-shouldered Hawk.  It was soaring and stooping
at another Red-shouldered perched in a grove of 
sycamore trees in the bottomlands  of a very large
sink. The noisy bird would soar well above the
woodlot and then dive at the perched bird.  At 
one time I estimated it could have reached a height
of 500 to 600 feet before it dropped.  

I checked the woodlot carefully from the road and
found the second bird.  I watched it for a long period
and then discovered a third Red-shouldered in the
woods.  At one one point I could hear up to three
birds calling at once.

Red-shouldered Hawks migrate through the area
in February and birds are on eggs as early as
late March in areas to the south of us in Tennessee.

It would be a  significant find if they are,
in fact, on territory and nest.

Red-shouldered Hawks are not known to nest in
the Ridge and Valley Region of Southwest Virginia
and Northeast Tennessee.  At least not anywhere
in the Upper Holston River drainage.

Ken Dubke discovered a nest of this species in
Shady Valley, Johnson County, TN during the
early 1960s.  Even that nest, while in the Upper
Holston River drainage, is from the Blue Ridge.

Dick Peake reports in his book on the Virginia
Cumberlands that there have been a number of 
nesting records in that region from 1937 to 2000.  It is
much more bundant in the breeding season west of
the Clinch Mountains. 

Let's go birding.....

Wallace Coffey
Bristol 

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