Hazel Bazemore Hawk Watch Fall '97 Recap

It's almost anti-climatic to say . . . "it's over."

The fall 1997 season has been a record-breaking season for hawk migration, not only at Hazel Bazemore, but throughout the entire United States and Canada. At the risk of forever wearing out all those wonderful metaphors and adjectives that nursed us through one unbelieveable sight after another . . . this recap will bring us back to the hill to re-visit the Fall '97 Watch again and again, to relive some of the more memorable moments. Please join us in a quick trip through our photo album and logs. We start . . . at the beginning.

Hazel Bazemore County Park is an unassuming little piece of greenery amidst a plethora of south Texas brushland. It's an oasis of sorts; nestled in a crook near the mouth of the Nueces River as it winds its way towards the Gulf of Mexico.

It spans less than 100 acres of land, yet during three months of the year, Hazel Bazemore County Park is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the country, in ways not measured only by money. For during those precious three months, literally hundreds of thousands of migrating raptors find their way by, across, through, and inside that little piece of Eden during their 2,000-mile-plus trek from their US/Canadian spring homes in the north to their Veracruz and South American winter homes far south.

And the species! Nearly every major raptor species in the Northern hemisphere pass over Hazel Bazemore and south Texas, as the Central and Eastern flyways funnel downward into an ever-tightening channel. The end of that funnel for the bulk of the migrating raptors sits right over Hazel Bazemore's humble little park.

A little history first. Even before ornithologist Connie Hagar of Rockport, Texas recorded "rivers of hawks" passing through the Coastal Bend during the falls of the 1930's and 40's, sometimes over periods of days, birders have known hawks migrated through our area. Official hawk watch counts have been carried on in and around Hazel Bazemore County Park and FM 624 for years, starting in the 1970's with simple picket-fence space-'em-out-and'-count-'em-up operations conducted by various volunteers over the years to the larger spanning counts we have today.

From 1988 to 1996, the counts moved to a 10-consecutive-day standardized count of the historical peak periods, coordinated by John Economidy, Texas Regional Editor of the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA). Still, those 10-consecutive-day counts were also supplemented by many, many, many individual and weekend days throughout the seasons, volunteer-counted by anyone who could get out and head for the hill and surrounding areas, to participate in the census.

In 1997, Hawk Watch International took note of the numbers and species spreads coming through Hazel Bazemore over the years, and initiated the first 90-consecutive-day standardized count for the site, with its first paid full-time counter on site every day to record reams of weather, observational and count data for later statistical analysis.

The first month of the Fall '97 watch (officially starting August 15th, although Bill and I started our watch on August 1st) started out predictably slow, even slower than expected for the usually high numbers of Mississippi kites that traditionally lead off the migration. El Nino kept weather patterns tropical and meteorologists on their toes; we had no real fronts come through to precipitate the condensing of the raptors.

By September, things were looking up considerably, with unprecendented numbers of swallow-tail kites passing through both Hazel Bazemore and Smith Point HW on the upper Texas coast. Although the peak broadwing migration looked to be coming towards the end of the month, we still had reason to hope for good totals.

Finally, the first five-digit day was recorded --- 29,917 BWHA on September 24th --- here they came!  Three days later, on September 27th, and right on schedule (on a weekend!), we saw our first six-digit day. And WHAT a day; broke all previous single day count records, hands down! From 9am to 5pm, the watch recorded a stunning 169,837 raptors (169,749 were BWHA)!  It was definitely the BWHA's moment to shine; all other raptor species for the day, combined, totalled less than one hundred. We retired from the hill that day totally spent but completely ecstatic. It just didn't get much better than this!

. . . . or so we thought . . . .

Sunday, September 28th dawned:  another hot one. Sweat was starting to pour from the humidity before the first kettles were even up. But when the thermals came, the broadwings came. And kept coming. And kept coming. And still MORE came. By day's end, we knew we'd had an incredible day. Calculator keys flew, in our brains and in our hands. Yes, the numbers were right. ANOTHER six-figure day! That was absolutely a record-breaker; never had two six-digit days been recorded in back-to-back at Hazel Bazemore CP. Day's end count:  an amazing 167,209 raptors (167,100 were BWHA)! Even more exciting, we'd started to see some dark morph broadwings, indicating migrants from the western flyway were finding their way over our heads (dark morphs reportedly only breed in Alberta, CA; a genetic anomoly no one seems able to explain quite yet, but a benchmark that hawk watchers know well).

We slowly put together our gear and packed up the day's leavings. Those of us who are forced to join the work forces five days a week tacitly agreed; Monday was a day to play "hooky"! Ain't no way, no how, any of us would be worth a flip sitting at our desks. It was understood. We were coming back to the hill! If for nothing else, to recover, catch our breaths, sit back, reflect, and just bask in the joy of each other's presence, celebrating the most incredible weekend most of us had ever been privileged to participate in and witness, including the old salts.

Oh . . . . what naive, unsuspecting innocents we were.

Monday, September 29th dawned, still another hot one in the making, and we couldn't get to the hill fast enough. After all, we were due a liftoff of broadwings at the very least! And, we weren't disappointed. Exhausted broadwings that had crash-landed into the western river bottoms and woods the night before slowly gathered up in smaller, then larger kettles, testing the air, then lifting off as thermals formed with the rising heat of the day. Glenn Swartz opened the watch and settled in on the hill, and watched the kettles rise. He didn't stay seated for long; by the end of the hour, 10,940 hawks were logged for the liftoff. Glenn stopped briefly to reset his counters and log in the total, and then he never got a chance to even catch his breath. Here they came! Joel Simon pulled up, bailed out of his Jeep, and started counting before the engine stopped turning over. Yet more kettles were sighted and called out; hawks were still rising. Over the horizon. North. Got 'em. East. West. No, more from the north. Got 'em! And they kept coming. And coming. By the time that stream finally ended, it totalled 56,000 broadwings.

Glenn and Joel stopped again to catch a quick breath and tally up the other kettles and groups -- new total:  88,746. The second hour of the day's watch had just ended. And the hawks just kept coming.

Bill and I arrived on the hill at 11:00am CDT, and were simply amazed at the sight. The tote board was already showing more than 130,000 broadwings, and it was only 11:30 am!

Suddenly, there was no more time to look anywhere but up. "INCOMING!!" Counters began furiously began counting, eyes rolled back in their heads, their clickers going off like castanets. And then, there it was ... a stream of hawks, with no beginning in sight, and no end in sight. Just a mass of movement; mini-kettles, swirls, eddies, seeking out the best thermals, then streaming out again. Assistant observers whirling like dervishes as they attempted to catalog and keep track of each of the kettles and groups filling all parts of the sky simultaneously.

Another river of hawks ... estimated at a mile wide and streaming for what seemed to be forever .... streamed and streamed and flowed and eddied around, past and over the watch site for six continuous hours, with small hiccups and gasps of breath in between the groups (and occasionally, the counters!). It was the most unbelieveable, incredible sight any of us had ever seen. Nobody thought about lunch. Nobody thought about a restroom break. There was no existence except for tens of thousands of pumping, driven broadwings. There were so many hawks in the air at once, in so many layers, that even the hawks themselves couldn't have stopped if they'd wanted to.

By noon, there were more than a dozen folks on the hill, elbow to elbow along the hilltop, and the hawks were STILL coming. Time slowed to a crawl. Fingers cramped from snapping counters as the broadwings streamed over. Tears ran from our burning eyes, unable to even blink; we just kept counting. The kettles flowed, and lazily traced their way on one side, then got faster and faster, then suddenly boiled overhead like a cauldron. Kettles of hawks. I have never had such an appreciation for alliteration and the metaphorical descriptions used over the years; all the terms came alive at that point, and were suddenly still inadequate to describe the experience. By the end of only the FOURTH hour of the day, we had topped out at more than 233,000 broadwings. We had just seen, in the span of four short hours (one lifetime's worth), more broadwing hawks than nearly any other entire seasonal count of any previous watch in the entire United States.

What happened that day is still somewhat fuzzy and blurry, in retrospect. We laugh and just shake our heads as we try to recall the experience. It's said that the mind goes into a surreal kind of timeless stage when faced with great stress. I'm here to tell you, that entire DAY fell into a kind of surreal state for those of us on the hill that day.

At the end of watch that day, as we regained some semblance of conscious thought, Joel Simon threw his arms straight out, and bellowed at the top of his lungs, "I'M FRIED!!" He had just realized that he'd just seen more hawks in this one day, than in 25 years of birding combined, including those two other hundred-thousand days. Walt Jenkins of San Antonio came to the same realization, and managed to add five new birds to his life list in the process. Amidst handshakes and backs being pounded, we slowly came off the high of the day, and made our way back down the hill. A special note went on the bottom of the Joel's official count log for the day. It read:  "Totally Awesome!"

Yep.  That just about sums it up.

See ya'll on the hill for the next watch!

Article by Patty Waits Beasley, with many contributions of time, memories, thoughts and photos from the dozens of local and visiting fellow raptorphiles who alternately sweated and froze with us on the hill during one of the landmark hawk watches of all time.

Click here to view some photos from the hill.