From 9-8 thru 9-15 we saw 79 Broad-winged hawks. Monday morning (9-19) Bill and I saw another 124 Broad-wings. The following is an e-mail detailing our weekend at the hawk watch. Jimmy Wilkerson Hixson, TN. Soddy Mountain, TN hawk report, 9/18/05, 10:30-5:45 EDST, cloud cover 1% in the morning to 60% when we left, temperature 74-86F, barometric pressure 30.13-30.09, winds light most of am, NW to N 2-10 MPH in the afternoon. Observers: Bill Haley, Jim Wilkerson, Harold Birch. After yesterday's 267 Broad-wings, we got an even better flight today. Things were promising in the morning when we saw several small groups of hawks for a total of 22 from 10:30-noon. However, a drought from 12:00-1:30 had us wondering. The old mid-day lull! Turns out we needn't have worried. We got only 11 hawks in the 1:00-2:00 hour. From 2:00-3:00 we saw 232 hawks with our biggest groups being 47 at 2:41, 141 at 2:50, and 26 at 2:58. From 3:00-4:00 we saw 133 Broad-wings, with only one large kettle of 42 at 3:14. Many of the hawks from 2:00-4:00 were straight up and very high. Harold had to leave at 4:00, but Jimmy and I stayed. Things really got interesting then! We had 41 BW at 4:00, 66 at 4:38, and 27 at 4:54. Final total for the 4:00-5:00 hour was 170. We usually leave around 5:00pm, as most days the flight is over by then, but we were glad we stayed today. We saw 45 at 5:04, 55 at 5:10, 39 at 5:15 and 58 at 5:28. A good final 45 minute total of 206! The last hour and a half we got some wonderful looks at close-in kettles and low-flying single birds. Nice! This will put us up near 1100 Broad-wings for the season so far. We counted two more Osprey, a Sharp-shinned and an American Kestrel in the last hour. Final total, Soddy Mountain, TN hawk lookout, 9/18/05: Osprey - 3 Sharp-shinned Hawk - 3 Broad-winged Hawk - 774 American Kestrel - 1 Bill Haley, compiler