Smith Point Hawk Watch

On a peninsula bridging Galveston and Trinity Bays and backing up to the Candy Abshier Wildlife Management Area, Smith Point Hawk Watch began in 1991 as a volunteer-run monitoring site for raptor migrations. In 1997, a more formal partnership among the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, Hawkwatch International, and Texas Parks and Wildlife built a 30-foot monitoring tower on the site. The tower has provided a more robust research facility and better viewpoint for counting the thousands of birds that kettle and pass through, peaking in the late summer and into the late fall. Typical migrants include broad-winged hawks, Mississippi kites, turkey vultures, sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks, as well as swallows, gnatcatchers, kingbirds, scissor-tailed flycatchers, and more.