This time of year I enjoy passing along excerpts from the daily narratives filed by the raptor biologists at N.H. Audubon’s hawkwatch on Pack Monadnock.
In addition to eight-hour days straining eyes for distant hawks; keeping an hourly record of migrating hawks, weather, and visitors to the site; and answering questions about the migration from visitors, the raptor biologists head home to enter all that data AND to write the day’s narrative.
Henry Walters set the standard sky high for lively narratives during his three years as the Audubon staffer. Somehow Katrina Fenton, now in her third year as the official counter, meets that standard. I didn’t think it possible.
I’ll start with a recent excerpt from Henry, who gives Katrina a break on Tuesdays.
September 20. “Warm, calm, and soupy. Even after the thick chowder of fog cleared out at 9:45, a cream-of-mushroom was stuck on the horizon much of the day. The heavy air limited visibility and seemed to deny the hawks the lift we thought they’d find. Southwest breeze didn’t help.
Expectations were high after a couple days of rain, but the hoped-for hordes failed to materialize. No party loyalty among today’s birds, no spirited collective action. Hawks in twos or threes or fives, even some grumpy libertarians going it alone. A kettle of 55 was the highlight, broad-wing-hawk-wise.
Plenty of action to keep the binoculars focused, though. Red-shouldered and Cooper’s Hawks dallied in front of us for long intervals, and all three models of falcon put in multiple appearances. Incoming sharpies kept the juncos on high alert, but they and the gormandizing hawkwatch chipmunk (slowly fattening up to the size of a red squirrel) survived to see another day.
25 fourth-graders from Amherst stopped by after their hike up Pack, just in time to see three species of raptors barrel through. Yet again, however, velociraptors were eagerly requested and failed to show. Thanks to the many great eyes up at the hawkwatch once more, helping to cover a big sky.”
And now excerpts from Katrina’s daily narratives:
September 22: “Today felt like more of a day for lounging at the beach sipping a tall, cool glass of icy lemonade than being slowly broiled at a hawk watch. The morning seemed to go along with this idea, with hardly a hawk to be seen, but broad-wingeds will not be denied this late in the season, especially if given light wind and good thermals to work with. By noon, we’d had a few small thermals come rising overhead, but still no indication of anything spectacular. Then the kettles began to grow. 20 birds. 50 birds. 100 birds. 200 birds…. Kettle followed kettle, broad-wingeds flying wing to wing with Ospreys and Bald Eagles. Birds rose from the Uncanoonucs, boiled up from the Little Notch, and mushroomed up in distant swarms over the Lempster wind farm. Over 2500 raptors were counted between noon and 3pm EDT, then the flight shut off as suddenly as a switch being flipped.
Students from Souhegan High School, Conant High School, and Wilkinson School were among the 122 visitors today. Cynthia Nichols jumped right in and gave a hawk talk to the kids and teachers.”
September 18: “Two white-haired gentleman, one from the north country of Vermont and the other from the area came by the hawk watch this afternoon. We talked of birds, and trout, and other things including the Vermonter’s collection of antique binoculars “passed to me by my ancestors.” Francie handed him her new pair to try, and when he put them to his eyes, all he could say was “Wow…… Wow!” He spent the next several minutes lost in the grandeur of a new world magnified times 8 through a [not antique] looking glass.”
September 15: “No birds until after 9am, when right on cue a Broad-winged Hawk breached the horizon and proved to every raptor within eyeshot that the thermals were starting. Before long, small kettles of 8-12 were rising. In a couple more hours, kettles of 20-40. A few hours later, kettles of 100-200 or more were boiling up and spilling across the sky. The peak of the flight didn’t come until after 5, when a seemingly endless flow of 896 birds streamed and kettled from far beyond the Lyndeboroughs to Crotched and beyond. Broad-wingeds began to wander and look for places to settle in for the night as thermals died to almost nothing, some swirling into the spruces not far below the count site.”
I’ve been up at the site once for a fallout at the end of the day as hawks descend from their swirling, sky-high kettles, dispersing for the night.
That day, many years ago, black shapes seemingly fell out of the blue everywhere I looked along a broad front. I remember the silence, too, complete silence.
It’s a memory that will last. I said that to Katrina, hearing about what she witnessed, and she nodded.
I will write about the raptor release last Saturday as part of Audubon’s annual migration celebration day. A big draw is the release of rehabilitated raptors back into the wild. As the 1 p.m. release time approached, a crowd of people did, too.
The hawks are rehabbed by Wings of Dawn in Henniker. When I get phone calls about injured birds, I pass along the Wings phone number and mention Maria Colby, a true saint who works around the clock to bring wildlife back to health and then release back to their wild world.
Another saint arrived with the three raptors — Andrea, a volunteer with Wings, who had no qualms about showing her emotions. More than once, as the time neared to open the three carrying cases, she said “I love you!”; “I wish you well!”
Off two young Cooper’s hawk siblings flew, each with some coaxing. A turkey vulture, last to go, showed little hesitation in lifting off.
All three were first-year birds, but instinctively they know to head south this time of year.
After the release I thanked Andrea for her work with Wings of Dawn. We chatted awhile. She said her connections with the wild ones had brought meaning to her life back when she needed exactly that. I understood. We hugged.
The gathered onlookers understood, too. As always when the wild ones fly off, there are tears in eyes and lumps in throats. Andrea’s emotions led the way.
Backyard Birder by Francie Von Mertens appears every other week in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.