Numbers so far

With just 10 days of counting and a couple more days to go until the end of the month, it's a little premature to look at numbers so far. But let's do that anyway.

August in Veracruz is all about kite migration. Last year, Swallow-tailed Kite peaked on the 29th, with 153. We haven't had such a concentrated Swallow-tailed Kite flight yet, although nearly every day so far had double-digits. So our running total of 152 falls well below last year's August total of 297.

For Mississippi Kite, we're pretty much on a par with last year: 66,567 so far, against an August total of 66,063 for 2008.

Other migrant raptors we've seen include Osprey (23 so far, similar to last year), Zone-tailed Hawk (8 so far, I think I've seen and even found most if not all of them), Peregrine Falcon (3) and Turkey Vulture (1).

Yesterday, two Upland Sandpipers were interesting migrants over Cardel.

This morning, on my day off, I went down to the river that runs a couple of blocks from our house. I found many common residents and expected migrants there: Yellow Warblers, Orchard Orioles, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo in the same trees I saw them in last year, Willow Flycatchers, and Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, Little Blue Heron, Green Heron (pictured above), Great Egret, Snowy Egret (pictured below), Green Kingfisher, Black Phoebe, a family of Brown Jays, a Bat Falcon and a Laughing Falcon.

I saw many familiar butterflies there, and one that was new to me but appeared to be common there: Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak.

Mississippi Kites were streaming through overhead.