View September, 1997 cumulative spreadsheet
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View day list of other species seen on 9-24-97 at
Hazel Bazemore NEW!
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Rpt Date: September 24, 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
9/24 Season
Black vulture 0
51
Turkey vulture 0
1
Osprey
3 27
Swallow-tail kite 0
7
White-tail kite 0
1
Miss. kite
15 2,762
Northern harrier 5
14
Sharp-shin hawk 22
58
Cooper's hawk 29
62
Harris' hawk 0
1
Red-shoulder hawk 0
19
Broadwing hawk
29,917 70,300
Swainson's hawk 3
133
White-tail hawk 0
2
Red-tail hawk 4
7
Amer. kestrel 17
35
Merlin
2 7
Peregrine falcon 3
11
Unk accipiter 5
25
Unk. buteo
0 14
Unk. falcon 3
5
Unk. raptor 6
81
Total:
30,034 73,622
NOTES:
Okay, you're all off the hook -- no prose today -- we had raptors! (And Bill & I both stuck at work today - sob!) The front finally passed and the bottleneck is starting to come through.
Texas valley, heads up! We're sending you broadwings for tomorrow!
No specific block of time for the raptors, they came through every hour. Kettles of broadwings started in the 10-11am CDT time period and ran through til 6:30pm (larger kettle sizes: 900, 3800, 450, 2500, 7800, 5976, 3600). At some point during the passage, counter Joel Simon says every kettle was within naked eye range. Most were pretty far out and moving south under a steady north wind. Cooper's hawks were also spread out through the day, at least one every hour.
Could be a decent liftoff early tomorrow morning (around 9-10 CDT, depending on when the cumies start popping), especially to the west of the watch site, down FM 624 into Wood River area.
Keep your heads up!
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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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