[texbirds] Tally from hawk-watching, Austin area
- From: Chuck Sexton <gcwarbler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: TexBirds Posting <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 20:53:00 -0500
TexBirders,
Here are some quick totals for my hawk observations today in Leander, Cedar
Park, and NW Austin. Barry Noret was with me for part of the midday and others
observers have chimed in that they saw portions of this flight in the Austin
area. The activity started about Noon; I finally gave up and came down off of
my roof at 6 p.m. this evening. All kettles and streams were heading ~ S on
moderate N winds under heavy cloud cover. Many of the kettles of Swainson's
were seen to drift up into and come down out of the base of the clouds.
Black Vulture - 13 (mostly local)
Turkey Vulture - 485, about 95% migrants
Osprey - 3
Northern Harrier - 1 (local)
Sharp-shinned Hawk - 7
Cooper's Hawk - 1
Red-shouldered Hawk - 1 (local)
Broad-winged Hawk - 13+
Swainson's Hawk - 9,520 (largest group was 5,000+ over Parmer Village Trail)
Red-tailed Hawk - 6 (2 local plus at least 4 migrants)
American Kestrel - 5 migrants
Merlin? - 1 possible
Total = 10,048 raptors and vultures at a bare minimum.
I suspect that the largest group of Swainson's which came over Parmer Village
at about 3:45 p.m. actually numbered closer to 7,000 to 10,000 alone, so my
numbers above are pretty conservative.
Nice day!
Chuck Sexton
Austin, TXEdit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
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- » [texbirds] Tally from hawk-watching, Austin area - Chuck Sexton
