Hello from The Hill!

September 13, 2000:

5 Black Vultures
2 Osprey
12 Miss Kite
2 Northern Harrier
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
1 Cooper's Hawk
1 Red-shouldered Hawk
30 Broadwinged Hawk
7 Swainson's Hawk
4 Unk Buteo
1 Unk Raptor
TOTAL 66

Thanks to Beth for today's report. She says the vultures came in high and kept on going ... while the sharp-shinned hawk displayed its typical chihuahuan tendencies and harassed a broadwing for entertainment on the way through the site.

Counters also saw a red-eyed vireo near the site today. Other migrants passing overhead included anhingas, wood storks and some very distant ducks or geese. Due to the extreme drought conditions, area watering holes are drying up and there are reports of dozens to over one hundred wood storks at a time in nearly-desiccated inland freshwater marshes. Today was our best hope of rain from the latest tropical low moving onshore. Don't know about inland, but around here, the coast didn't get much out of it other than a good morning boomer shower here and there, some rainbows through the day and some wonderful cloud and squall formations in the Gulf. Every little bit helps, though.
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Fall 2000 hawk watch crew: watch coordinator, Joel Simon (email: jsimon@electrotex.com); counters Jo Creglow, Scott Rush, Beth Hahn; and education director Thom Benedict. Plus a cast of many, many volunteers, whose help over the years is so gratefully appreciated!
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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
Email: pbeasley@electrotex.com
Web: http://www.electrotex.com/aoc/