In September, life is on the move. Squirrels are secreting away acorns, beavers are sprucing up their lodges, and hatchling snapping turtles are scrambling toward their ponds. Milkweed pods are casting their feathery seeds into the wind, and bears are foraging on beechnuts and apples and grubs and whatever else they can find – up to 20 hours and 20,000 calories a day.
When it comes to autumnal comings and goings, however, the greatest of all is the winged migration streaming around and above us – both by day (hawks, monarch butterflies, green darner dragonflies) and by night (saw-whet owls, songbirds, bats).
The first flush of fall migration always catches me by surprise, as it occurs in what is most decidedly still summer: this year, the first nighthawks to migrate through our region were reported on Aug. 17. Nighthawks have one of the longest migration routes of any North American bird – some individuals fly from northern Canada all the way to Argentina – and they feed exclusively on flying insects, so they need an early start to ensure they can find enough fuel along the way. Peak migration through the Monadnock Region occurs from the third week of August through Labor Day, with the largest concentrations foraging in the airspace above the Ashuelot and Contoocook Rivers. More than once, I’ve been stopped in my tracks by the sight of hundreds of these acrobatic birds, swooping low above downtown Keene in silent, ethereal flocks.
Nighthawks are but a precursor to what my Harris Center colleagues often refer to as “the greatest show above earth” – the fall raptor migration. When weather conditions are just right, thousands of hawks can pass through our region in a single day.
For more than fifteen years, observers with the Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory – a partnership of the Harris Center for Conservation Education and New Hampshire Audubon, hosted by Miller State Park – has tallied fall-migrating raptors from the summit of Pack Monadnock. Pooled with data from other hawk watch sites across the continent, these counts reveal important trends. After concerted conservation efforts, some raptor populations are thankfully increasing (bald eagles, merlins, peregrine falcons); other counts reveal cause for concern (ospreys, goshawks, and kestrels, to name but a few).
Pack Monadnock is one of New England’s premier hawkwatching destinations, and in an ordinary year, thousands of visitors trek up to the Peterborough summit, binoculars and field guides in hand, in hopes of witnessing a spectacle. Of course, this is no ordinary year. The official count goes on, but visitation is limited this fall due to COVID-19 restrictions. Anyone hoping to view the migration from Pack Monadnock this season should keep in mind that an online reservation system is now in place and that advance reservations are required by all visitors to enter the park.
Thankfully, there are many other ways and places to experience the migration: you can see the skies from the summits of Skatutakee, Pitcher, or Crotched Mountains, or even from your own backyard. According to Hawk Watch Coordinator Phil Brown, “all you have to do is find a little patch of sky on the right day.” A few years ago, my friend and colleague Eric Masterson, who has spent more time thinking like a hawk than anyone I know, saw hundreds of broad-winged hawks circling overhead simply by stepping out into his Hancock backyard and looking up.
Though the thousand-bird days will likely be behind us by the time this column goes to print, the river of raptors will continue, in one form or another, through mid-November. By then, fewer individuals will be moving through, but the potential for spying a golden eagle – a rare sight in the Granite State – is enough to entice hardy birders to pack a thermos, add another layer, and keep their eyes to the skies in late autumn.
If you’d like to give hawkwatching a try but are unsure where to begin, you can pick up some tips in the Hawkwatching for Families and A Hawkwatching Primer videos on the Harris Center’s YouTube page. You can also sign up for one of several upcoming virtual raptor-related events or follow along with the migration via online field reports at harriscenter.org.
Of course, birds are not the only species who wing their way across vast distances. In 2018, researchers discovered that green darner dragonflies experience a complex, multi-generational migration involving a southbound autumn trek of more than 400 miles – quite an achievement for an insect that’s just three inches long.
Though the particulars are different, the overall strategy of one generation undertaking the southbound fall migration and a different generation heading north to New England in the summer is similar to the iconic migration of the monarch butterfly. The next time you see a monarch nectaring on your neighborhood asters and goldenrod, consider that it may be in the midst of a 3,000-mile journey to central Mexico.
How is it possible that a young hawk who fledged mere months ago can find its way across thousands of miles – past skyscrapers and suburbs, rivers and rain forests – to an entirely different hemisphere, and back again? How can it be that a butterfly weighing far less than a dime can flutter from Mount Monadnock to Mexico, at a rate of up to 100 miles a day, under its own power? If these feats sound miraculous to you, it’s because they are – and yet they’re also quite common, the regular routines of the everyday creatures who share our fields and forests.
At a time when the pandemic has drawn many of our own travel plans to a standstill, there is something particularly moving about bearing witness to these grand migrations. As we wait and worry and wonder about what the future might hold, we can also pause for a moment, breathe deeply in the crisp September air, and let our imagination alight on the wings of our ordinary, extraordinary wild neighbors.
Brett Amy Thelen is Science Director at the Harris Center for Conservation Education.