[texbirds] GCBO Smith Point HW, 16 Oct

From: Tony leukering <greatgrayowl@xxxxxxx>
To: Texbirds <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Tamie Bulow <Tamie.Bulow@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Tom Reed <coturnicops@xxxxxxxxx>, "Ellen (Ma) King" <ellendunnking@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:32:55 -0500

Hi all:

First, a slight emendation of Joe Kennedy's post about yesterday.  While I was 
attempting to photograph the Selasphorus hummer at the tower yesterday 
afternoon, I thought that I'd briefly seen two Selasphorus through the 
viewfinder.  Since I never again saw two, I decided that my mind had played a 
trick on me.  However, one of the pix that I took at that time proved the case: 
 two imm male Rufous Hummers (I'll post the pic tomorrow).

Refreshed from most of two days away from the tower (but during which Tad, 
annoyingly, got the best landbird flight of the fall!), I arrived at 7:30 this 
AM to a developing low overcast and light ENE.  In my first two hours I counted 
two raptors.  Darn, Tad, for taking all the birds with him!

With the wind swinging toward SE, the low overcast gave way in mid-morning to 
high mostly cloudy and the birds started moving, led by a squadron each of 
Black and Turkey vultures.  A few Broad-wingeds followed them up, and a steady 
trickle of harriers, accipiters, and kestrels began.  The only visitor of the 
day arrived in the middle of this veritable flight and got to see some birds, 
including the...

Bird of the Day:  The White Ibis (WHIB) flight here is usually composed of lots 
of relatively small flocks (5-45 birds), starting an hour or more after sunrise 
and continuing through mid-afternoon or so.  Today, I had two morning flocks 
totaling 18 birds.  Then, just before 2 pm, two flocks of ~300 birds EACH came 
through.  These were the two largest WHIB flocks I've seen here, and they came 
through almost together!  The final total of 406 included one last flock of 56 
shortly before the visitor left.  So, he was here for about an hour and saw all 
but 18 of the WHIB!

Unfortunately, during this time, another low overcast developed, knocking the 
raptor flight back to near-zero levels.

The astounding phenomenon of the day was the complete lack of definitively 
ID'ed B-g Gnats!

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

Black Vulture 19
Turkey Vulture 13
Mississippi Kite 2 juvs
Northern Harrier 13 (2 ad f, 7 brown, 4 juvs; many were very distant)
Sharp-shinned Hawk 20
Cooper's Hawk 10
Broad-winged Hawk 11
Swainson's Hawk 1 light
American Kestrel 34 (10m, 19f, 5u)
Merlin 1 ad male
Total 124

Enjoy,

Tony

Tony Leukering
Smith Point, TX
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[texbirds] GCBO Smith Point HW, 16 Oct

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