Hello from The Hill!

Not as hot today ... mercury only hit 100.4-F. Supposed to be 107 minimum. Thank goodness for small favors. Hawks were high and fast again, amidst hazy blue no-clouds sky (until mid-afternoon, when they started trickling in; not that there was anything to see against them other than tons and tons of swallows). Jo Creglow and Scott Rush on the clock today for HWI:

Osprey 1
Miss Kite 3
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
Swainson's Hawk 4
Total 10 hard earned raptors

Hummingbirds are in, big time. Glenn Swartz opted to forego watch this weekend to band hummers at his house (congrats on getting your permit this past summer, Glenn) ... last report, were upwards of a couple hundred around his feeders today. Which means hawk watch coordinator Joel Simon's house probably had a bunch as well; they're less than half a block apart up on the ridge near the watch site, and the hummers know both yards well.

Butterflies today: Yellow Brimstone, Pipevine Swallowtail, and Tawny Emperor (that one landed on my lunch; didn't know they liked calamata olives). Other migrants: usual passerines; one dust devil that whirled through the watch site right in front of us, right across the middle of the site twenty feet from our seats (a small vortex, but fun; didn't even kick dirt in our faces); five plastic bags of varying colors that were nearly as high as the few raptors; five wood storks; our local red-shouldered and white-tailed hawks; and nine gas hawks (otherwise known in the civilian world as airplanes and helicopters). Oh yeah, Bill saw some mosquito hawks (dragonflies), too. Slow day? Nah. Just depends on what you're willing to log in! <grin!>

Cheers,
Patty 

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Fall 2000 hawk watch crew (so far): watch coordinator, Joel Simon; counters Jo Creglow, Scott Rush, Beth Hahn; and education director Thom Benedict.
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The Hazel Bazemore Hawk Watch appreciates the many volunteers and supporters that have helped bring the watch into the forefront of migration studies. Thanks to Electrotex, Inc. for sponsoring our web site; Hawk Watch International for their on-going support and sponsorship of the watch efforts. Also to the Northwest Business Association, Central Power and Light, Nature's Bird Center, Margaret Cullinan Wray Charitable Trust, the Trull Foundation, and the Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi.
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Hazel Bazemore County Park is in western Nueces County, Texas, west of the central Gulf Coast city of Corpus Christi. To find it, take FM624 west from SH77 for about 1 mile to the road on the right with a park sign marking it (past a Dollar Store and cancer treatment center, on the right). The park road is just on the west side of the water canal that crosses FM624. Across the street is a car wash. Turn north and take the park road; go one half mile to the park entrance gate. To reach the fall hawk watching spot, take the park entrance, make a left as soon as you get across the speed bump, and follow the winding road to the crest of the hill (past the restrooms, a covered picnic pavilion and around the next bend). Where the road makes a bend to the left, start looking for a place to park. Watch times: 8:30am-5:00pm, Texas time.
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Cheers from your roving hawk watch reporter,
Patty Beasley, Corpus Christi, TX