[texbirds] Re: GCBO Smith Point hawk count, 19 October
- From: Tony leukering <greatgrayowl@xxxxxxx>
- To: "texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 19:27:31 -0500
Oops - dropped the phone, which then sent my email WAY too early!
> All the boring days, all the fretting about really low numbers. It's all
> forgiven for the spectacle that was today's flight!
>
> It started benignly enough. In the low overcast, Ron Weeks notched the first
> Sharpie at 7:25 and counted the first hour's 22 migrating raptors of four
> species. The oppressive low overcast stayed around during the next four
> hours while hourly raptor numbers slowly climbed -- 39, 95, 168 -- then
> dropped slightly (154).
>
> But then, the overcast cleared out, the puffy altocumulus stuck around and
> Broad-wingeds (BW) started coming out of the woodwork. The first hour with
> some blue sky -- noon to 1 -- gave us 840 new BW for the day, plus six
> Swainson's Hawks. However, in the midst of that hour, Cliff asked me if I'd
> gotten a dark-morph BW, yet, to which I replied in the negative. Some 10-15
> minutes later while I was counting BWs streaming from the Bay going N
> overhead, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh...
> oh no, 'twas a dark BW! 'Yippee's and high fives were passed around that we
> got the year's dark BW and I passed out Pepperidge Farm Nantuckets. Morale
> was high.
But then, there were TWO MORE that hour! Wow, what's the seasonal record?
'Three,' someone suggested. Cool! Then, guess what. The BWs continued to
stream by, coming from the E and disappearing to the W, often passing right
ovethead! Along with large numbers of late BWs came the dark morphs: 1-2 pm,
1149 BW, 5 dark; 2-3 pm, 809 BWs, 4 dark, and 3-4 pm, a whopping 1984 BWs, NINE
dark!!!!
Not only was that the most dark BWs that I'd ever seen in an hour, it was more
than I'd seen in a day! But we weren't done! Ron left shortly after four, so
missed out on the pinnacle, a kettle of 525 BWs that was very high, but fairly
close. As I was starting through the streaming birds, there was one, no two --
three! More! Five, no six dark BWs. Finally, SEVEN dark morphs! YOWZER! I
even got individual pix that included 4-5 of 'em!!
Today's BW tally was the highest-ever post-2 Oct count and the second-highest
post-Sep count ever (at least in the records available to me, 2002-2013). The
total tally more than doubled the season's previous high count.
Oddly, it would have been a good day at the tower without the raptors. I still
need to count the specks on my screen, as I had to photo them, but we had a
multi-hundred count flock of Wood Storks, plus a few other flocks. Levie found
a male Vermilion (note, just one 'l') Flycatcher near the WMA's entrance. Ron
found a crow flying W out front that became the second local record of Fish
Crow. There were 10 flocks of Am. White Pelicans, 6 of Anhinga, some N.
Pintail and Green-winged Teal, a Myrtle Warbler, a Marbled Godwit, three flocks
each of 3 Roseate Spoonbills, a juv Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a couple Herring
Gulls, three flocks of Gr. White-fronted Geese, and the season's first flock
(68) of Franklin's Gulls! Not at all a shabby day!
Raptors counted:
Black Vulture - 5
Turkey Vulture - 64
Osprey - 7
Mississippi Kite - 1 (juvenile)
Northern Harrier - 10
Sharp-shinned Hawk - 225
Cooper's Hawk - 75
Bald Eagle - 1 (juvenile)
Red-shouldered Hawk - 1 (juvenile)
Broad-winged Hawk - 5477
Swainson's Hawk - 38 (1 dark)
Red-tailed Hawk - 1 (juvenile)
American Kestrel - 214
Merlin - 2
Peregrine Falcon - 0 :-(
Total - 6121
Tomorrow morning should be good, but the light E wind might not give us a
sustained flight and the blue sky will allow the birds we get to get up very
high quite early.
Tony
>
> Tony Leukering
> Smith Point, TX
> http://smithpointhawkwatch.wordpress.com/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony_leukering/
> http://www.aba.org/photoquiz/
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