Hazel Bazemore Hawk Watch, Fall 1999
Date:   09-26-99

Hi everyone,

It's funny how words will often come back to haunt us. During an interview with visiting film makers on Saturday at the watch site, I was asked what it takes to be a hawk watcher. Of course, the top three qualifications on my list were a love of chocolate, a lot of patience and a good sense of humor. Not necessarily in that order, mind you! Today, for example, put chocolate in number 3 position, patience in number 2 and a good sense of humor in number 1! The anticipated flood of hawks did not occur over Hazel Bazemore today. As a matter of fact, just the opposite; Joel's report shows a little of the frustration we were all feeling today, to some degree:

"After yesterday I could not imagine a worse day, but after the 501 raptors counted today against last years 306,911, this must be the bottom. We went from being 150,000 ahead of last
year's totals to 150,000 behind. Today was the first day of our chain of secondary sites and we can only hope tomorrow will be better." -- Joel

That being said, even though the "big push" of hawks hasn't come in yet, we are still a little ahead of the game (ever the optimist; you know me!) thanks to the monitoring of three satellite sites for four days, starting today. It paid off in dividends already on this first day. As we suspected, a number of hawks were going farther west than the Hazel watch could catch, and today, that's exactly where we got our largest numbers (although still no big totals, seemingly indicating the "big push" has not yet arrived). So the concept for monitoring east and west of the watch was confirmed. The rest of the week will tell the tale as to just how strategic our site choices will be.

The Celebration of Flight had live raptors at the site today, thanks to Devon from the Texas State Aquarium. The Aquarium has a raptor rehabilitation and education program in place in addition to its general avian and marine animal rehabilitation programs. Several non-releasable raptors are in residence at the Aquarium, used for education and today, Devon introduced hawk watch visitors to Cleo, one of the two Swainson's hawks in residence at the Aquarium. Thanks, Devon, for taking time to come out and further our knowledge of raptors, and allow us an up-close-and-personal view of one of the most beautiful of our southern raptors.

The postings tonight and the next three nights are going to be somewhat different as I will post Hazel's numbers (that's site #1), and in addition, each of the three sites (#2 was east of the main Hazel Bazemore watch site; Sites #3 and #4 were west by 5.5 miles and 13.2 miles, respectively), then the cumulative total for all at the bottom:

--------------------

HB.....#2......#3......#4....... Site name
0..............3................ Black Vulture
0..............4.......3........ Turkey Vulture
0............................... Swallow-tailed Kites
1..............1.......3........ Osprey
1......1.......1.......2........ Mississippi Kite
0............................... Bald Eagle
0..............6................ Northern Harrier
6..............3.......8........ Sharp-shinned Hawk
14.............3.......6........ Cooper's Hawk
0............................... Harris's Hawk
0..............1................ Red-shouldered Hawk
495............7531....3987..... Broad-winged Hawk
3......4.......8.......8........ Swainson's Hawk
0............................... Ferruginous Hawk
0............................... White-tailed Hawk
0............................... Zone-tailed Hawk
0......................4........ Red-tailed Hawk
0............................... Crested Caracara
2..............4.......3........ American Kestrel
1......................2........ Merlin
4............................... Peregrine Falcon
1............................... Prairie Falcon
0............................... Aplomado Falcon
1..............1.......4........ Unidentified Accipiter
0......................1........ Unidentified Buteo
0............................... Unidentified Falcon
2......1...............2........ Unidentified Raptor
531....6.......7566....4033......Totals

--------------------

We had a great time at the remotes, even though one site (the eastern one) was shut down early for lack of traffic. We all passed the time entertaining each other and watching local day birds. Site #1, of course, was the main watch site at Hazel Bazemore County Park.

Site #2 is an old city-owned landfill hillock east of the main watch site at Hazel Bazemore, manned by Marty Cripp and Jimmy Jackson and friends. Even though they only racked up six birds for six hours work, they had the most entertainment from the raptors, I think. Jimmy Jackson reports a kestrel zipped on in and snatched up a mouse right by the watch site. Three immature white-tailed kites not only found some lunch in the form of a snake at the watch area, but then proceeded to do what most immature young do, and played with their food; dive bombing each other and twisting and fighting over the snake. Must've been quite a show! Three red-tails and a local immature Harris's hawk also cruised the site; even though they're resident birds, they managed to fill some notches on some life lists of our visitors today.

Site #3 is right on highway 624, which runs due west from the entry road to Hazel Bazemore. Believe me, Chuck Brittain and friends worked harder than anyone else at their site, putting up with traffic on the highway (it's a pullover area, but still noisy due to passing traffic) in addition to working up passing hawks. Apparently it was the right place to be for the majority of the passing hawks today, as they racked up the highest counts in broadies.

Bill and I were at site #4 (the westernmost site, a privately-owned large hilltop lot 7.7 miles further west than site #3, and about 1 mile farther north, on the upper Nueces River bluffs) with Glenn Swartz and 35 other hawking buddies. We were entertained by the two Mississippi kites dive bombing each other and other passing raptors every chance they got until they finally moved on. An accipiter and a Couch's kingbird had a "discussion" over airspace in the afternoon right next to and over our watch site; concensus was that the Couch's won the argument, hands down! Site #4 also had some really good day birding early on, before the hawks even got up in the air. Here's a sampling of our day bird list from the Westlake site (it's probably pretty representative of the brush country habitat that still prevails in the western portions of Nueces County:

red-shouldered hawk
red-tailed hawk
Cooper's hawks
sharp-shinned hawks
American kestrels
Harris's hawk
caracara (went due west; local or transmigrant)
loggerhead shrikes
bronze cowbird
Couch's kingbirds (lots)
scissor-tailed flycatchers
mourning doves
inca doves
white-winged doves
ground doves
rock doves
turkey vultures (300 in a nearby gravel pit and surrounding brush)
black vultures (15 that just wouldn't leave the area)
mockingbird
lark sparrows
starlings
yellow-billed cuckoos
American cardinals
curve-billed thrashers
long-billed thrashers
green jays
great kiskadees
great-tailed grackles
snipe (7)
golden-fronted woodpeckers
ladder-backed woodpeckers
red-winged blackbirds
cattle egrets
Baltimore orioles
chimney swifts
barn swallows
cave swallows
rough-winged swallows
white-eyed vireos
white-faced ibis
ruby-throated hummingbirds
buff-bellied hummingbird

We also had 114 anhingas and 11 wood storks at site #4.

- Cheers from Patty Beasley, Joel Simon, Fernando Ramos, Ryan Wagner, and the rest of the HBHW cast and crew!