Hazel Bazemore Hawk Watch, Fall 1998

Report Date:  09/29/98

ohmanohmanohmanohman. I'm starting to get the shakes. Another watch record; a FOURTH six-digit day in a row! ohmanohmanohmanohman. John Economidy, are you there? Can you believe this?!

Once again it's another late night post; just got home (I highly recommend attending at least one school board meeting in your life. It's a real eyeopener. Especially if you don't have kids. Don't ask; long story! But it's not nearly as much fun as hawking!)

ohmanohmanohmanohman. Pardon me if I repeat myself a few times. I checked in for Joel's report as soon as I got home, and spent the next few minutes just kind of in a neutral position, shaking my head back and forth and scrolling mindlessly up and down the screen (*no, the numbers are not changing --- that's what it really says!*). ohmanohmanohmanohman. (*Note to file: don't read tomorrow's report with mouth full of peanut butter and jelly sandwich ... it's not very good for the keyboard*). ohmanohmanohmanohman.

Okay, here we go; maybe I'll be a little more coherent after we run the numbers:

Species                 Today   (Season-to-date)
Black Vultures          3       (47)
Turkey Vultures         0       (5)
Osprey                  10      (98)
Swallow-tailed Kite     0       (6)
Mississippi Kite        4       (3560)
No. Harrier             6       (85)
Sharp-shinned Hawk      64      (537)
Cooper's Hawk           7       (99)
Harris's Hawk           0       (4)
Red-shouldered Hawk     0       (32)
Broad-winged Hawk       134986  (864962) (THE RECORD IS BUSTED!!)
Swainson's Hawk         4       (214)
White-tailed Hawk       0       (3)
Red-tailed Hawk         3       (72)
Am. Kestrel             15      (187)
Merlin                  0       (19)
Peregrine Falcon        11      (99)
Prairie Falcon          0       (1)
Unidentified Accip      7       (112)
Unidentified Buteo      1       (16)
Unidentified Falcon     1       (18)
Unidentified Raptor     8       (117)
Today's total:          135130  (870294) (holy ...... !)

Glenn's Day Birds are back!
Anhinga 1230
Cattle Egret    50
Killdeer        1
Laughing Gull   1
White-winged Dove       1
Mourning Dove   1
Chimney Swift   1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird       1
Brown-crested Flycatcher        1
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher       1
Tufted Titmouse 1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher   5
Loggerhead Shrike       1
European Starling       1
White-eyed Vireo        1
Olive Sparrow   1

ohmanohmanohmanohman. I'm still floored!

Okay, some more goodies from the hill from Joel's notebook; thanks so much for that sharpie footnote! How cool!:

"No clouds this morning and only a few until later in the afternoon made today very tough.  Glenn and I have blistered eye-balls looking at very high and far off flights of broadies.  Thanks to Bob Creglow for spotting so many incoming.  I'm sure you realize we passed last year's total count today, and are on target to break the one million mark!"

"The count on accips and falcons was down, tell Bill that was his fault for not being here.  Sheri from "Last Chance Forever" is on her way over to release two barn owls, that will be fun.  Their programs went great today (to area schoolchildren) with over 900 kids attending.  Tomorrow will be their last day."

"Oh yes, after we had closed the watch, Jimmy and Bob found a sharpie in a tree eating a mouse...great look and great way to end the day."

And an omission from yesterday's watch from my notebook:

You butterfly experts out there; tell me. How fast do those little buggers fly when they're in a monster ball coming up from the brush? I was doing a routine horizon scan yesterday morning for hawks and suddenly, my viewfinder was filled four times over with what looked to be the biggest massed ball of butterflies I'd ever seen in my life. If there was one there were half a million minimum; maybe several million. I have NO idea how you count them. (Now, I realize that's a little incongruous <grin!>, but really! How DO you count butterflies like that?! For hawks in a ball or kettle, no problem! But these guys were relatively close, and apparently traveling through some sort of time warp. By the time I got the shouted alert out of my mouth, and Glenn broke from his chair and ran over to me (couldn't have been more than three seconds), every single one of them was gone! They'd risen en masse in two monster balls, floated through a few trees from the pond to the back of the golf course's 17th fairway, and flat out disappeared through the trees. I even ran to the back of the tee box to see if I could intercept them. They were gone! (okay, I hear some of you out there. NO, I didn't have any chocolate at that point yet, and certainly not at that hour; it was early even for me to start eating it!). As to species, I'd have to guess it was a batch of those Mexican snouts (ouch, let the flames begin! Hey, that's what they call them down here; I'm not completely sure what the formal name is.). We had a massive migration of them several years ago (now THAT was fun; counting hundreds of thousands of hawks and trying to sort them out from the millions of darn butterflies that were as thick in the sky as bees around a honey hole ....) Anyway, I throw that out for thought; I've never seen butterflies wing to wing with barely a space in between, in quite that formation. Eyeballing the blobs, I'd say they ranged 25-30 feet across its diameter, and there were two balls like that, side by side, traveling like two St. Elmo's fires. Weird! But absolutely neato!

Okay, enough for tonight; gotta go update the web pages with these numbers. That poor old spreadsheet's gonna melt ... one million .... here we come!!

Keep that chocolate flowing!