View September, 1997 cumulative spreadsheet
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View day list of other species seen at Hazel Bazemore
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Rpt Date: September 27, 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
9/27 Season
Black vulture 0
51
Turkey vulture 0
1
Osprey
12 41
Swallow-tail kite 0
7
White-tail kite 0
1
Miss. kite
2 2,783
Northern harrier 0
15
Sharp-shin hawk 6
106
Cooper's hawk 17
127
Harris' hawk 1
2
Red-shoulder hawk 1
22
Broadwing hawk 169,749 290,057
(NOTE: 9 dark morphs)
Swainson's hawk 8
151
White-tail hawk 0
2
Red-tail hawk 1
12
Rough-legged hawk 1
1 (NOTE: dark-morph)
Amer. kestrel 11
67
Merlin
0 7
Peregrine falcon 6
19
Prairie falcon 0
1
Unk accipiter 21
79
Unk. buteo
0 13
Unk. falcon 0
6
Unk. raptor 1
89
Total:
169,837 293,660
NOTES:
Better than average day today at Hazel. (!)
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Okay, okay, you all know me better than this by now. Despite being held down kicking and screaming to "let the numbers speak for themselves" when I posted the day's count to the Tex-Bird and BirdHawk newsgroups (translate that to "don't brag!!") - I GOTTA tell ya ... today's count was simply phenomenal. We broke all records today (that we can find!) of previous broadwing counts at Hazel.
The icing on the cake was the watch's first dark-morph rough-legged hawk that had everyone's jaws on the ground for the short time we tracked it. Kettle sizes were very healthy; the largest was 76,000; another kettle passed over with 40,160. Two other five-digit kettles logged in earlier in the day.
Peak flights came under a CLEAR BLUE sky (correction: we did log in one lonely lost little cloud for a short period in the afternoon!) -- it was definitely a "scope" day for a good portion of the kettles. But we did get some nice fly-bys and overheads that even the local CBS affiliate television station could get in their viewfinder (mini-cams are not the easiest thing to find hawks with).
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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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