I was driving north on hwy 35. When I got up on the Guadalupe River bridge I
noticed about 40 Swallow-tails at tree top height, dodged a car and pulled off
the hwy as best as I could. I then saw another group of about 20 at high
altitude. It then got kind of crazy for a minute as both groups merged and I
had what might have been a 3rd group of 20 or so swirling in the mix. While
all of this was going on I was trying to video the flock with my cell phone.
Jumped in the car and back tracked towards Tivoli until I got on top of the
bluff and caught up with the flock again.
My best tally was 65
I got back to the office and had to read a safety message on safe driving.
Brent Ortego
Victoria, TX
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 28, 2015, at 4:44 PM, Joseph Kennedy <josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Edit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
Both Corpus Christi and Smith point moved their hawk watch dates from
August 15 to August 1 to count more swallow-tailed kites. Except for 1 day
a couple of years ago Smith point never found more than a couple of kites
day. Kites can be up at binocular range limits or down very low moving very
fast where if you are not under them and alert they are half way across the
bay while you write down the temperature and wind direction.
They do migrate earlier in numbers. Years ago when a dozen were feeding
young between liberty and Dayton, I had 61 when groups moved through. A
week later only one pair with 2 later youngsters were the only kites.
It may be related to food. They gather in riverbottoms etc to eat
dragonflies, locusts, katydids, lizards etc. If food is abundant they
linger and when the food is gone they move on but will stop at another good
food source.
There are 3 kites being tracked that will come by the 2 counts in the
coming days or weeks
http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=665
One bird came from northeast of Lake Ponchartrain and is lingering on the
Sabine. Tracking them will tell you when to look up.
It is probably not feasible to ask people to spend 8-10 hours on top of a
tower right now in the hope of a kite. Volunteers would be welcomed however
and we might learn something. I did spend the hottest day in Texas history
at 113 up in the breeze several years ago for either 1 or 0 hawks. Probably
would call in sick today or go home early unless radio tagged kites were
coming.
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 3:12 PM, Brush Freeman <brushfreeman@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Brent Ortego can expound on this as I was having a bit of phone problems
but he had a flock of ~65 migrating Swallow-tailed over the Delta just a
bit ago..Amazing! Folks on the Corpus hawk watch might catch them,
assuming the hawk watch is happening this early
--
**********************************************************************
Brush Freeman
503-551-5150 Cell
120 N. Red Bud Trail. Elgin, Tx. 78621
http://texasnaturenotes.blogspot.com/
Finca Alacranes., Utley,Texas
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Joseph C. Kennedy
on Buffalo Bayou in West Houston
Josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx
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