[texbirds] GCBO Smith Point HW, 12 Oct

From: Tony leukering <greatgrayowl@xxxxxxx>
To: Texbirds <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Tamie Bulow <Tamie.Bulow@xxxxxxxxxxx>, "Ellen (Ma) King" <ellendunnking@xxxxxxxxx>, Tom Reed <coturnicops@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:18:32 -0500

Hi all:

Another southerly-wind day, another ho-hum, couple-hundred-bird day.  This 
place is absolutely the best hawk-count site I've seen on off winds!  The Cape 
May counter would have been lucky to get 25 birds in these conditions (light 
south, blue sky).

At 9:51 this morning, I got a text from Tamie B. informing me of

"Massive kettles of  TVs over Eagle Ferry Road."

That road is up the peninsula a ways, but at the time, I had seen nary a Turkey 
Vulture.  Unfortunately, that huge gob of TVs never made it down to me (or I 
never saw 'em), but there were TVs around much of the day after 10 am.  Oddly, 
I counted the same number as yesterday, though the flock sizes were different.

Again, little in the way of landbirds, though B-g Gnat numbers jumped to 22 (6 
Scossor-taileds, a Yellow-shafted Flicker, and a single Dickcissel were the 
only other migrants in that division).

Big, white birds again put on a show, this time for the big group from Kleb 
Woods, with 276 Wood Storks in 9 flocks (the first bird, flying solo, had a 
dangling - probably broken - leg, the left, I think) and 142 Am. White Pelicans 
in 8 flocks.  Three seconds, Bob, which species averaged larger flocks?  :-)

The hummer show is winding down; I have not seen more than 8 for the past few 
days.  The problem with that (other than simply the loss of the spectacle) is 
that single birds can now continuously defend individual feeders, rather than 
being swamped by 'usurpers.'

Anti-Bird of the Day:  The two adult Peregrines that went by, separately, as 
scope specks while the group was here, not being kind enough to drift at least 
into binocular-speck range.

Bird of the Day:  The Merlin that made such a nice pass, that I could assess 
its size to be convinced enough to record it as a female.  Then, when I got 
home and edited today's pix, I saw that it was still growing outer primaries, 
thus was an adult and, since it wasn't blue-backed, was obviously a female!  I 
love it when a plan comes together!

Raptors counted (count conducted by Gulf Coast Bird Observatory):

Turkey Vulture 62 (flocks of 44, 18)
White-tailed Kite 1 (ad; pix to be posted later)
Mississippi Kite 1 juv
Osprey 1
Northern Harrier 10 (1 ad male, 1 'brown,' 8 juv)
Sharp-shinned Hawk 53
Cooper's Hawk 24 (it was a Broad-winged-type day, though with few BW, so the 
percentage of Coops was high; 2 ad, 12 juv, 10 u)
Broad-winged Hawk 96
Swainson's Hawk 3 (all light, 2 juv, 1 u)
American Kestrel 14 (8m, 3f, 3u)
Merlin 1
Peregrine Falcon 2
Total 268

It looks at this point like Monday will, again, be a good day.  I think that 
that's three Mondays in a row, now.

Enjoy,

Tony

Tony Leukering
Smith Point, TXEdit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
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[texbirds] GCBO Smith Point HW, 12 Oct

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