When you can count 600,000+ raptors in a single season, there’s no more fitting way to describe the experience than to say that it rocks. Over 100 youth in the Coastal Bend learned just how much “Hazel rocks” last month during the annual Celebration of Flight festival in Corpus Christi, Texas.
With support from the Hazel Rocks Fund, established in memory of longtime volunteer Dane Ferrell, students from Incarnate Word Academy and Fulton Elementary School’s birding team visited the Corpus Christi HawkWatch to learn about raptors, hawkwatching, and conservation. It’s something that Dane’s wife and current Corpus Christi crewmember, Libby Even, says he would have loved to see.
“Dane loved birds, but even more than that, he loved getting kids involved in birding,” she said. “He would have been thrilled to see so many kids on the platform learning how to use binoculars and identify raptors.”
Students also had the opportunity to get up close and personal with raptors. In addition to a live bird show, they also participated in a guided owl pellet dissection, where they learned more about what these nocturnal raptors eat and how to identify different bones.
It was an opportunity that teacher Martha McLeod said she was happy for her students to have. “Taking young kids to see the thousands of migrating hawks was an awe-inspiring experience,” she shared.
Established last fall, after the unexpected passing of longtime friend and volunteer, Dane Ferrell, the Hazel Rocks Fund was created to carry on his legacy of raptor education. The name was chosen to honor one of Dane’s many catchphrases from his time HawkWatching at Hazel Bazemore Park, “and Hazel will rock…”
Support from the Hazel Rocks Fund was also used to design a Corpus Christi HawkWatch Nature Journal, which will be used to educate youth who visit the site for years to come. The journal will also soon be translated into Spanish to reach even more youth in the Coastal Bend.
You can make sure Hazel continues to rock by making a tax-deductible gift. Click here to support the Hazel Rocks Fund: https://hawkwatch.org/daneferrell/
This blog was written by Kirsten Elliott, our Development & Communications Director. You can learn more about Kirsten here.
