October 12, 1999

Hello everyone, had the tower all to myself today. Fortunately there was

plenty to look at up there. I spent lots of time at the scope, the hawks

were quite high. It was super-hazy this morning but then some beautiful

cumulus clouds moved in and showed me where the birds were. Toward the

end of the day I saw two interesting events. One was an interaction

between a Peregrine and a Swainson's. The falcon went out of its way from

above to swoop at the hawk a couple times, zooming around the lumbering

buteo like a show-off. The other event was a loose "kettle" of 15

kestrels. It appeared that several smaller groups had arrived at the

point at the same time and got backed up as they approached the bay and

circled around a few times.

On the non-raptor side, I saw over a thousand geese today and almost all

of them were flying north (?). However, the most impressive sight was a

large flock of white pelicans. They came in 5 or 6 lines until the front

group hit a thermal and turned back toward the others, who then joined in

the circle. I didn't have time to get an exact count as there were

several hawks in the air too but there were at least 500 or 600 pelicans.

Today's count:

16 Black Vulture

29 Turkey Vulture

2 Mississippi Kite

13 Northern Harrier

44 Sharp-shinned Hawk

30 Cooper's Hawk

102 Broad-winged Hawk

4 Swainson's Hawk

3 Red-tailed Hawk

91 American Kestrel

1 Merlin

6 Peregrine Falcon

1 Unid. accipiter

2 Unid. raptor

344 Total Hawks

Until tomorrow,

Kyle McCarty

Official counter

Smith Point Hawk Watch is made possible by donations from Exxon,

Hawkwatch International, Houston O.G., Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, and

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Computer donated by Texas Partners in Flight and Compaq. Thank you all.

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