Hazel Bazemore Hawk Watch, Fall 1998

Report Date:  09/28/98

Thanks for staying up; just got home; still trying to assimilate the numbers....

Ohhhhh, man. We're knocking on the door! Yet another six-digit day! Longest count day of the "weekend" ... birds were coming in til nearly sundown. Peak hours were right in the usual window, but ran longer than the usual 2-3 hour window: 10am-3pm watch time (11am-4pm cdt). A lot of high haze kept the birds high and almost invisible at times; winking in and out of view as they passed from wispy to wispy.

The Great American Chocolate Experiment held true; we brought out the chocolate and in less than ten minutes, were buried in broadwings! You all think we're kidding; well, just ask those folks in your area who were there (especially the ones who took great care to bury my chair in chocolate while I was up counting one 20-minute long river ... cute! We're still eating on the pile!).

A special welcome to the Jacks Mountain Hawk Watch (hi Margaret!). It's such a joy to meet folks from other watches, to compare notes, to contrast conditions, and mostly, to just commune with each other while enjoying hawking together. Your patch was also a wonderful surprise and will grace the pages of our web site later this fall (when things slow down a little!). Anyone else with a hawk watch patch who would not mind it being displayed on our web page, please let me know off-line; I'd love to dedicate a page to hawk watch patches. What a neat idea, and what a great way to id and promote the sites!

Well, while we were sweating out another ten pounds of body liquid (not counting the daily withdrawals of blood demanded by the official hawk watch pests, those Texas-sized mosquitoes!), some more migrating hawks put on a number of continual air combat displays. Harriers are winning the aerial participation battles; they apparently will dive on anything, including each other! Kestrels are the chihuahuas of the air, as we all know, and are afraid of nothing. (There's one ferruginous hawk that overwinters with us on Mustang Island that can attest to that; the ferrugie comes to the same area each winter, along with a kestrel that thinks the territory is his, with no use for the ferrugie. Hilarious to watch that kestrel try to run off that ferrugie - who couldn't care less that the little mosquito-sized falcon is diving it!) Sure enough, this afternoon, one kestrel passing in the near vicinity of a harrier couldn't resist the temptation and got into it with the harrier. The harrier DID kind of start it by jumping the kestrel and chasing it around the sky for a few twists and dives. All in "fun" you understand ("get out of my airspace" kind of fun). The kestrel took high exception and proceeded to return the favor repeatedly. The kestrel got the upper hand by being a lot more maneuverable and quicker off the mark and in the turns. The kestrel also managed to get in a great whack on the harrier's head during one dive; a hoot to watch. The harrier never even saw it coming, and gave that little kestrel what-for, ending up upside down after one flight sequence in a talon-to-talon grip with the kestrel for a second or two. Great real-life classroom on aerodynamics and flight physics!

Okay, it's late again; just not enough hours in the day, even for these 12-16 hour days we've been keeping during the peak. So enough yacking for now; here's the numbers...

Species                 Today   (Season-to-date)
Black Vultures          6       (44)
Turkey Vultures         2       (5)
Osprey                  17      (88)
Swallow-tailed Kite     0       (6)
Mississippi Kite        9       (3556)
No. Harrier             12      (79)
Sharp-shinned Hawk      88      (473)
Cooper's Hawk           25      (92)
Harris's Hawk           2       (4)
Red-shouldered Hawk     2       (32)
Broad-winged Hawk       203814  (729976)
Swainson's Hawk         14      (210)
White-tailed Hawk       0       (3)
Red-tailed Hawk         9       (69)
Am. Kestrel             26      (172)
Merlin                  1       (19)
Peregrine Falcon        12      (88)
Prairie Falcon          0       (1)
Unidentified Accip      4       (105)
Unidentified Buteo      0       (15)
Unidentified Falcon     2       (17)
Unidentified Raptor     1       (109)
Today's total:          204044  (735164)

Counter and records compiler Glenn Swartz's day bird list remains on hold til the dust settles! But, the resident groove-billed anis put on their welcome duds today; three of them came out of the brush at one time to watch the hawk watchers from the nearby brush line.

One final quick note: Glenn Swartz has a new email address. Please update your address books to read <gswartz@electrotex.com>.