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View day list of other species seen on 9-21-97 at
Hazel Bazemore NEW!
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Rpt Date: September 21, 1997
Site: Hazel Bazemore
County Park
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, TX
27 deg. 51.936"
97 deg. 38.560"
Reports: Patty Beasley (pbeasley@electrotex.com)
Counter: Joel Simon & Glenn Swartz
(Hawk Watch Int'l)
(site manned 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Aug 15-Nov 15)
Sponsors: Hawk Watch International
Support: Hawk Migration Association of
North America
Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi
Species
9/21 Season
Black vulture 0
51
Turkey vulture 0
1
Osprey
0 16
Swallow-tail kite 0 7
White-tail kite 0
1
Miss. kite
2 2,670
Northern harrier 1
6
Sharp-shin hawk 5
24
Cooper's hawk 1
30
Harris' hawk 0
1
Red-shoulder hawk 0 18
Broadwing hawk 3,068 34,363
Swainson's hawk 0
120
White-tail hawk 0
2
Red-tail hawk 0
3
Amer. kestrel 0
6
Merlin
0 3
Peregrine falcon 1
7
Unk accipiter 0
17
Unk. buteo
0 12
Unk. falcon 0
2
Unk. raptor 1
72
Total:
3,079 37,432
NOTES:
Rain, rain, rain. Stood watch for five hours with only the resident red shoulder and harrier seen. Other migrants were moving between cells; flocks of orioles and blue-gray gnatcatchers (with one black-crested titmouse for company) jumped scrub trees, looking for a quick snack and better cover. More than two dozen intrepid watchers finally coerced an elusive green jay who'd been scolding us all morning into showing himself in his full colors right at the edge of the watch site. We also discovered that the sun shade shelter we'd been using to guard against the UV during the watch also made a wonderfully impromptu RAIN shelter; it's amazing how many bodies one can cram into a nine-by-nine canopy when the rain pours down! Some folks also discovered it's not good to get too close to the edge of the canopy when the rain decides to slough off; a few folks got cold face-fuls of water bestowed (just when you think it's safe to come out of the water ....!).
The Pacific front did as we hoped it wouldn't, and petered out on us; it's still hung up somewhere between here and San Antonio/points north. Meanwhile, the pesky little low that has been biding it's time in the Gulf decided to come get acquainted, and brought lots of little storm cell buddies with it. Watch was on until 1:00 p.m. when it was called -- but, true to Murphy's Laws of Hawk Watching, as soon as the park was cleared (and that's after some of us "hard cores" hung around an extra 45 minutes or so, until the next cell of rain ran us back into our cars), the clouds starting breaking open a bit. Joel Simon notes he had just been back at his house for about an hour when the first broadwing kettle broke from the clouds over the river, right behind his house! (This is the advantage of having official counters who live less than half a mile as the hawk flies from the official watch site!) Joel and his wife ran back in the house along with some other visitors who also couldn't quite find it in themselves to call it a day yet, and who had been birding the Simons' yard from their back docks; a quick call was placed to Glenn Swartz, and the race was on to the park. Joel says they arrived at the watch site just in time to see the broadwing kettle from his house come into the watch area and fly by directly overhead at a nice low altitude. Other kettles soon followed, all small (40 to 300 hawks), breaking out of the cloudbase for the next hour and a half. Not bad, considering we were covered with 45,000-footer storm cells all day.
In closing today's report, let me also just say a heartfelt thanks to Buddy Gough of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on behalf of all of us at the Coastal Bend Hawk Watch for that wonderful article you did that ran full page today in the Sports section -- very nice job of condensing what we're doing and what the watches are all about.
Think good thoughts for tomorrow; with luck, the rain may break enough to get some more of the kettles in.
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Hazel Bazemore County Park has been the site of raptor migration
counts
since the 1970's. Beginning in 1990, the Hawk Migration Association
of
North America began conducting 10-day standardized counts for fall
raptor
migration. In 1997, Hawk Watch International sponsored the first
3-month
standardized count for the fall raptor migration. The tiny county
park was
once the best-kept raptor migration secret in the country, but
is rapidly
gaining recognition as the having the highest concentration of
migrating
raptors of any one location in the continental United States. Peak
fall
migration days bring well over 100,000 raptors in one day through
the
Nueces River basin and bluff located within the park boundaries.
Season
totals can run well over as high as half a million. Funneling actions
of
fall weather systems aid in the consolidation over the park of
migrating
raptors from both the Central and Eastern flyways, and on occasion,
we
suspect, some Western flyway incursions.
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To find Hazel Bazemore Park take FM624 west from SH77 for about
1 mile to
the road on the right with a park sign marking it. The park road
is just on
the west side of the water canal that crosses FM624. For more information,
see the Hazel
Bazemore page on the Audubon Outdoor Club web site.
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To go to the hawk watch site, go in the park entrance, make a left
as soon
as you get across the speed bump, and follow the winding road to
the crest
of the hill (past the restrooms, a covered picnic pavilion and
around the next bend).
Where the road makes a bend to the left is where we park, and sit
under the trees
(up against the 17th tee box to the golf course behind the park).
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