Fellow Texbirds & Hawkers,

The Fall '97 season of the Coastal Bend Hawk Watch has come to an end at Hazel Bazemore County Park. And what a season it was!

Many new records were set and a few old ones broken. With this being the first year that Hawk Watch International (HWI) sponsored the hawk watch with
paid observers for 90 days, next year will be the year to break records.

The Coastal Bend Hawk Watch started in the fall of l988 at Hazel Bazemore County Park and has been manned ever since by volunteers, until this year. In previous years, most of the counting was done during the last two weeks in September or when someone felt like spending a day at the park. Few reports were made in August, October or November.

Through the years as hawk watching became more popular, so did the Coastal Bend Hawk Watch at Hazel Bazemore County Park (Hazel). As more people spent more days and hours looking into the skies over Hazel, more species and larger numbers of species were observed.

I started going to the hawk watch in 1989 and have volunteered to count hawks every year since. I have watched it grow through the years, but I did not imagine the hawk watch would be so well supported this year with the extended days.

HWI extended the watch from Aug. 15th. to Nov. 15th. Every day during the hawk watch, the official counters have had a visitor at least part of the day. On a few weekends there was so many visitors (100+ on some days), the 4 official counters could not keep up with who was on the site and count hawks.

There were several people that volunteered a lot of their time to the watch, but only two of them were lucky enough to be named as "official counters" without pay. They were Patty and Bill Beasley. The Beasley's were on the site every free day off they had and then some. (I wish I had a job that would let me go hawking instead of working). Patty also put together the Coastal Bend Hawk Watch web page and has spent many hours keeping it updated daily, along with daily postings to the Texbirds and BirdHawk newsgroups.

I can't count how many times (and that's what I get paid for) I heard someone say, "I'm keeping up with the Coastal Bend Hawk Watch's web page" or "been following the hawk watch on the net or Texbirds". I believe that having a web page and updating it daily brought a lot more people to the hawk watch. THANK YOU PATTY! and thanks to everyone else who came out and helped.

Most of the numbers of species didn't surprised me that much, but the following did:

Broad-winged Hawks: In previous years we counted about 400,000 in a season. I still can't grasp the 800,655 that was counted this year; what a jump. Almost every year we count 100,000 plus Broad-wings in a single day. So on Sept. 28th. when we counted 169,749 I just thought that the hawks have been
building up to the north of all the rain we had in Texas the week before, and when the rain let up, the dam had broken and we were getting flooded with hawks. By the end of the day on 28th., I thought all the Broad-wings in North America had passed over in one day. On the Sept. 29th. I figured we would see 20,000 or so stragglers, not another 167,100. What a weekend!

On Monday, the 30th. I just knew it was going to be a slow, long day without many hawks. How can there be any more Broad-wings to count? Okay, maybe a couple of thousand, after the weekend; I can do that with my eyes closed. Well, the truth of the matter is that I don't remember much of what went on that day. No, I wasn't sleeping, at least they said I wasn't. I just don't know, it does seem like a dream. I think I do remember counting the lift off that morning of 20,000, but I'm not sure.

The first memory I had for that day was someone saying "lets get 300,000". I was thinking 300,000 what, candy bars? I looked down around my feet and saw at least twice that many candy wrappers and started feeling very sick at the thought of having to eat that many more candy bars. I love chocolate, but
not ten pounds in one day. (Chocolate candy was proven beyond a doubt this year to be the ultimate "hawk bait" -- the more we ate, the more hawks came! We ate a lot.)

After my head cleared a little, it dawned on me they were talking about hawks. I thought they were joking around, after all this is still the first hour of the watch today, isn't? After swimming out of the pool of candy wrappers around me, I saw the daily tally board. My god, 300,000 Broadwings, where have I been? By the end of the day we tallied 302,180. The sad thing is, I only remember looking through my scope and clicking my clicker all day. I'm still bewildered on how all those candy wrappers got around my feet.

I was also surprised by the numbers of Peregrine Falcons (76) and Prairie Falcons (8). I thought we were too far inland to have that many Peregrines migrating over. Prairie Falcon, I haven't even seen that many in the Coastal Bend in the ten years I've been birding.

I'll let the rest of the numbers speak for themselves. I can't wait to see what next year is going to bring.

  Species         Total for Year   # of days    Highest date    Second high date
Black Vulture           425             22      10/7 = 24       9/19 = 21
Turkey Vulture          10,283          29      10/26 = 2,804   10/27 = 2,079
Osprey                  82              33      9/27 = 12       9/23 = 6
Swallow-tailed Kite     7               3       8/24 = 5        8/18.20,26,9/4
Mississippi Kite        2,965           48      9/24 = 2,008    10/13 = 158
White-tailed Kite       4               5       9/15,10/24      10/26,11/2
Northern Harrier        88              37      10/27 = 7       9/24,10/26 = 5
Sharp-shinned Hawk      942             53      10/13 = 114     10/28 = 68
Cooper's Hawk           415             54      9/25 = 36       9/24 = 29
Harris' Hawk            5               5       9/20,27,10/27   11/1,11/9
Red-shouldered Hawk     75              35      10/27 = 6       10/4 = 3
Broad-winged Hawk       823,655         53      9/30 =302,180   9/28 = 169,749
Swainson's Hawk         300             46      10/13 = 23      10/26 = 21
White-tailed Hawk       4               3       8/30, 9/20      10/13, 10/21
Zone-tailed Hawk        2               2       10/2            11/2
Red-tailed Hawk         115             28      10/26 = 13      10/27 = 6
Ferruginous Hawk        1               1       11/2= 1
Rough-legged Hawk       1               1       9/27
Golden Eagle            1               1       10/27
Crested Caracara        9               5       10/27 = 2
American Kestrel        191             44      9/25 = 19       9/24,10/4 = 17
Merlin                  25              14      10/26 = 5       10/4 =3
Peregrine Falcon        76              37      10/13 =13       9/28 = 6
Prairie Falcon          8               7       10/31 = 2       9/26,10/2,4,13,14

unid. accipters 307     unid. buteos    17      unid. falcons   14      unid. raptors   222

Total for fall of 1997:    840,245