Coastal Bend Hawk Watch, Fall 1999
Hazel Bazemore County Park + 3 satellite sites
Date:   09-28-99

Hi everyone,

A tropical low made its way onshore in the Coastal Bend this morning (bounced us out of bed with some pretty heavy rain on the coast), but we all got up, got out and manned the watches through the showers. Bill and I thought we were hearing some distant thunder at one point in the morning while manning our post at site #4 (the western-most site in the now-three site chain for this week's satellite project). I now think that what we actually heard was Joel Simon's voice booming out "FINALLY!!! BROADWINGS!!!" from the Hazel Bazemore main site, and the simultaneous sound of Chuck Brittain's voice booming out from site #3 "OH MY GOD!! THEY WON'T STOP COMING!!"

Chuck had good reason to scream; he was ALONE at his site when tens of thousands of broadwings suddenly poured out of cloudy skies right over his head. Talk about timing; Joel had just sent Art Olsen out to check on Chuck and bring over a cell phone to make his reports. The site greeting Art would have likely won ten thousand dollars at any funniest home video contest; Chuck tells us he was drowning in broadwings at that point, madly trying to keep up with what looked at the time like an endless river of broadwings flowing overhead. Art managed to dodge traffic and pull into the site and was greeted by the sight of Chuck whirling and dashing across the site, as many clickers in hand and at hand as he could manage, tracking and counting a minimum of four rivers flowing over simultaneously. Art dove in and helped track and count, and once the smoke cleared from the clickers, the count for the river came in at 81,208 broadwings.

The best bird of the day was also from Chuck's site #3, an adult bald eagle that came in low, slow and all but shook hands with Chuck on the way by. The eagle came in just before the river hit. What an act to follow! The shock and pleasure of that sighting almost got lost in the frantic melee of the next hour's block. Almost!

Joel, meanwhile, was busy on the hill with Fernando, during that same period, tracking another 45,000 broadwings over Hazel Bazemore's main site. Poor Joel, he got to open the watch site this morning just in time to get a nice little rain shower, as did Chuck. We wondered for awhile if we'd even have a watch; dark skies predominated throughout most of the day, with off and on showers all around us. Strangely enough, Bill and I made it to our western-most site to surprisingly mildly cloudy skies and bright sun; we didn't get rain at our site until around 3:30pm cdt. Guess we should have had some rain early, too; because we didn't get much in the way of raptors, either! Site #4 was practically dead today. Joel says his flights were mostly from the west; Chuck's were pretty much dead overhead. The one rain shower at site #4 that closed our part of the watch an hour early brought down some broadies, so at least we'll have something to look at tomorrow morning. IF the weather from yet another front coming in tonight doesn't rain us out. Site #2 of our satellite sites has been closed for lack of traffic.

Tonight's posting is in the temporary format. Hazel is site #1; the satellite sites are: #2: an old landfill dome east of the main Hazel Bazemore watch site that closed after its first day due to lack of traffic. Sites #3 and #4 were west of Hazel Bazemore by 5.5 miles and 13.2 miles, respectively.

Wow, what a day! We're anticipating yet more flights; the majority of the broadies still haven't made it through the Coastal Bend yet.

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HB..........#3......#4....... <-- site name
............................. Black Vulture
115.......................... Turkey Vulture
............................. Swallow-tailed Kites
............5................ Osprey
3...........4................ Mississippi Kite
............1................ Bald Eagle
1...........6.......1........ Northern Harrier
34..........26......8........ Sharp-shinned Hawk
15..........19......4........ Cooper's Hawk
3............................ Harris's Hawk
............3.......1........ Red-shouldered Hawk
45339.......82616...714...... Broad-winged Hawk (#4: 11 dark morphs on 9/27)
8...........23......1........ Swainson's Hawk (#1: rufous morph on 9/28)
............................. Ferruginous Hawk
1............................ White-tailed Hawk
............................. Zone-tailed Hawk
1...........5.......2........ Red-tailed Hawk
............................. Crested Caracara
............6.......5........ American Kestrel
1............................ Merlin
8...........4.......2........ Peregrine Falcon
............................. Prairie Falcon
............................. Aplomado Falcon
3...........7.......4........ Unidentified Accipiter
....................1........ Unidentified Buteo
1............................ Unidentified Falcon
1...................5........ Unidentified Raptor
45534.......82725...748...... Totals

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Get the clickers and the chocolate ready!

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