Site:       Hazel Bazemore County Park
            Corpus Christi, Nueces County, TX
            27 deg. 51.936"
            97 deg. 38.560"
            Site manned 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, CENTRAL standard time, Aug 15-Nov 15
Counters:   Joel Simon (jsimon@electrotex.com) and
            Glenn Swartz (glennswartz@worldnet.att.net)
Reports:    Patty Beasley (pbeasley@electrotex.com)
Sponsors:   Hawk Watch International
            Hawk Migration Association of North America
            Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi
            Hazel Bazemore County Park
            H.E. Butt, Inc.
            Central Power & Light Company

Report Date:  August 17, 1998

Greetings all,

Another slow day on the hill. Joel says the watch was rained out for the most part. Three hours logged in before they were waterlogged. Only one raptor on the books today, says Joel; a nice red-tailed hawk.

Storm system still holding Victoria hostage about 90 miles from the watch site, northeast up the Texas coastline, according to radar (which also noted a second day of hail for the area). If and when the clouds break, any hawks that got backed up behind the front should have a good shot at moving on through the watch.

Raptors are certainly in the area, if not in great numbers yet. On Sunday morning at nearby Pollywog Pond (about five miles or so from the hawk watch) Kent Taylor surprised two snoozing broadwing hawks in the trees. Another pair of broadwings winged overhead a little later while he birded.  Kent noted one of the four was an immature. A Mississippi kite rounded out his birding for the morning. Unfortunately, none flew over the watch site that day; took another line south. Kent logged a good day bird list at Pollywog Pond, too, as recapped below:

four broadwing hawks (1 imm.)
one Mississippi kite
four olive-sided flycatchers
two Couch's kingbirds
numerous kiskadees
numerous least flycatchers
several Traills type flycatchers
scads of yellow warblers
two yellow-breasted chats
thirty groove-billed anis
twenty-five pied-billed grebes
one least grebe
one immature brown pelican (kinda out-of-place)
approx. one hundred orchard orioles (all at once!)
two buff-bellied hummingbirds
olive sparrow
dickcissels (sp?)
all the swallows
 

Anyone else noticing the ducks are also starting out early? We've already had pintails, ruddy ducks, grebes of all sorts and shovelers coming in. Another interesting season is on hand!