Hi, Tweets - I am only posting a tiny portion of this hawkwatch report. I
was going to comment on the fact that in two days over 13,000 Broad-winged
Hawks left Ontario, Canada just a day or two ago. Well, it seems that they
gathered in some friends as they went south:

>Hazel Bazemore County Park is in western Nueces County, Texas, west of the
>central Gulf Coast city of Corpus Christi.

>all's I know is ... we eat chocolate, and the hawks come! <laugh!> So 5:30 pm
>rolls around, we've eaten some more chocolate, and all of a sudden, Libby's
>tensing up, we hear an "ohmigod!" out of her ... then we hear ... well,
>another "ohmigod!" out of her ... then we're all flying out of our seats,
>grabbing binos ... and suddenly, there they were! They weren't real close;
>matter of fact, they winked in and out so much we didn't even get a full
>count on the whole flight. But what could be counted formed a huge cyclonic
>kettle that counters later noted stretched upward an estimated 15 degrees
>from the bottom of the funnel column to the top. Fifteen minutes later,
>when they all finally passed out of sight, clickers and counters had logged
>in 30,500 broadwinged hawks in that one massive mega-kettle. Everything
>else in the day seems somewhat anticlimactic ... and right up to that
>kettle, we were already celebrating a really good day anyway; much better
>than previous days this season and already the highest take of the season's
>count, with several thousand broadies on the books even before that
>mega-kettle hit. Wow. Storms along the migration path may well have served
>to back up hawks until the skies cleared sufficiently. Not that WE ever got
>much of that rain that's been around for weeks. But folks north and east of
>us did, throughout several states, and that may have been enough to
>concentrate the hawks for a few days. Theories abound as to liftoff
>tomorrow. The broadies sailed onward out of sight ... could have continued
>on, but thermal lift was practically gone by then anyway. There may or may
>not be some that hung around and doubled back, so we'll just have to see
>come tomorrow morning! Darn tootin' we'll be bringing more chocolate

My note: for the day, they had 33,899 broadwings, and a total of 34,006
raptors (turkey vultures haven't even started)

>There are a few dickie (day) birds I should go ahead and mention: scads of
>anhingas (more than 1200), white pelicans, even some snow geese today ...
>also, locally, the groove-billed anis were serenading the morning crew
>again on the watch site (got to get out real early to see/hear those guys
>... they usually stay quiet and inactive during the heat of the day). The
>local red-shouldered, white-tailed and red-tailed hawks entertained us
>throughout the day as well.

An anhinga is a dickie bird? Well, those of you that like hawkwatching,
will be properly impressed by those numbers; for the rest, I'll be gone in
a day so you won't have to read/delete quickly any more numbers from
distant hawkwatches.

Enjoy our own migrations!

Cheers, Diann
___________________________
Diann MacRae
Olympic Vulture Study
22622 - 53rd Avenue S.E.
Bothell, WA 98021
mailto: tvulture at halcyon.com
http://www.halcyon.com/tvulture/