I am posting this chart here, and will also post it permanently to the page for past statistics. (see the tab to the right.)Double click on the chart to bring up all columns of stats, including days and hours. The first chart from Bill Haley's brochure covers the years up through 2004. These stats are from Jimmy's logs for the past nine years ( 2005 - 2013,) and are a combination of those hours logged by us and our hawk watching friends who also keep records, and report. (Primarily - Harold Birch, Bill Holt, and Bill Haley.) Various others have been recognized in the individual blog posts. We are greatly indebted to them for all data they have helped us to log. This information will be given to Kevin Calhoun, and others who are responsible for documentation for the TOS, both local and statewide. We will make the chart public as soon as possible, and upon some closer inspection. Hope it answers a lot of questions that visitors have had about documentation over the past 10 years.
Looking forward to making 2014 a full 10 year showing.
(As you notice above, the chart gives our 2013 totals. I lack only one more entry of days Bill Haley spent in the final month that brought us to those totals. Those totals and a general wrap up for the year will be given in my next post.)
Although we recorded a 500+ estimate in the notes, the overwhelming truth is that there may have been thousands of BW's on the day noted for uncountable hawks. There were layers and layers of clouds and haze that the birds were moving through. But the expanse of sky the mass covered was a space never before covered with what appeared to be a singe dense mass of BW's moving in unison. Perhaps in multiple huge kettles that were close to one another. The most distant of the hawks were merely glistening specks, like glitter in the sky because they had moved beyond the ability to see them as hawks. But the mass was continuous, and those which had not moved beyond the ability to count them faded quickly into the mass which moved ever toward the west. Realizing they were disappearing so quickly into the mists, I counted only 130 before I got Jimmy on them. He was able to count only 40 of those before they "blinked out" for him. It's difficult to explain how the clouds were moving, and swirling hazes faded the specks before you could count more than a few at a time. But the sky seemed to be crawling in the most distant open areas. It was a vision I will not soon forget.
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