Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - From raptors to tropical birds, the Hawk Watch has some fringe benefits

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Tuesday, October 24, 2000

From raptors to tropical birds, the Hawk Watch has some fringe benefits

Besides counting raptors, there are other benefits to be gained by attending the fall Hawk Watch at Hazel Bazemore County Park. Many other resident and migrant birds are there. Watchers partake of chocolate with no accompanying guilt trip, because eating chocolate is superstitiously believed to attract kettles of migrating hawks. Perhaps the best benefit is visiting with like-minded birders from different parts of the country and world.
   Following are a few of the people I talked with during about three weeks of the Watch. Two sisters, Sylvia Hilbig and Denise Hutzler, had come down from San Antonio. Sylvia had devised a system for remembering what birds she saw each day. She had stored multi-colored post-it-tabs inside the cover of her field guide and, when a bird was seen, used one to mark the page on which the bird was found. She had only to go through the tabs to record or remember the day.
   Lynn Guerra, a member of our local club, came often, and brought with him young nieces and nephews, indoctrinating them into birding. On one day he brought sisters, Ruby and Emily, about 5 and 6 years old. They were well behaved and listened attentively to everything he told them.
   In good company
   It is always entertaining and informative to renew acquaintance with John Economidy, San Antonio attorney who put this watch on the map. His latest project is doing range maps for a new book, soon to be published on raptors, by Brian Wheeler. Wheeler's earlier book is a must for serious hawk watchers. It is A Photographic Guide to North American Raptors by Brian K. Wheeler and William S. Clark.
   Linda and John Runkel are retired educators. They live between Kerrville and Fredricksburg on 10 acres of hill country. There they enjoy building rock walls, installing deer fences, landscaping with suitable plants. They also like to bird, travel, read, talk and eat...maybe in that order. They loved the Hawk Watch.
   Ardent birders, Dr. Simon Calle and his wife Cecilia Calle were from Timonium, Md., but earlier in their lives from Medellin, Colombia. He is a pathologist. They came here especially to see and help count hawks.
   Novices and experts
   One morning 15 students from an advanced placement class in environmental science came from Portland-Gregory School District. Their teacher was Rita Pearson and they were accompanied by a parent, Tracy Riggs. Richard Gibbons of the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, Inc., was their leader, Official hawk Watch crew members Scott Rush and Beth Hahn were delighted to be able to show the young people a large kettle of broad-winged hawks.
   Pat and Whit Whitaker were there from Richardson, Texas Art Arenholz from Albuquerque, N.M., said that he had learned of the Watch from an article by Patty Beasley published in the American Birding Association magazine last winter. Many said they had learned of the Watch on the Internet. Another Corpus Christi couple, Margaret and Linda Alley, came many days.
   Park residents
   As for birds, tropical and South Texas special birds are apt to just wander in front of the watch site any day. Groove-billed anis, black, loose jointed birds with drooping tails, pass singly in family troupes on daily rounds. Scissor-tailed flycatchers arrive dressed in autumn finery. Unlike other species the fall plumage of this bird with the divided, streaming tail, seems brighter than in spring. The peach colored edge of pearl white breast is more delicately tinted and the flaming scarlet of the underwing more dazzling as they decorate electric wires above green mesquite trees in the park.
   In the last few years green jays have reliably appeared. Like blue jays, which are not found in South Texas except during an occasional winter irruption, greenjays travel in noisy, highly social groups. Their backs are a bright fuscia green and their heads are a handsome navy blue. They make a strange clicking rattle in addition to the familiar jay outraged scream.
   Greater road-runners are frequent visitors on the grassy hillside in front of the Watch site. As birders lower their eyes for a moment's respite from the glare of the blue sky, a gangly brown bird ambles into the edge of the brush that rings the grassy top of the hill. He spies the birders and freezes...then darts forth to gulp an edible insect.
   Besides the charming but familiar serenades preferred by a large clan of mockingbirds, boisterous exchanges between great kiskadees liven the air. These flycatchers with large, strikingly striped black and white heads and bright yellow breasts are now resident in the park.


Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

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