Thanks to last Sunday’s record numbers of broad-winged hawks, New Hampshire Audubon’s hawkwatch on Pack Monadnock reached the 10,000th migrant well ahead of past years. The day’s total for migrating hawks was 5,290, a record for New Hampshire Audubon’s hawkwatch site.
Photo above courtesy of Lillian Stokes
Backyard Birder #454 / for September 22, 2011, courtesy of Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
A river of raptors
Records broken last weekend
by Francie Von Mertens
For 16 years I’ve written here about broad-winged hawks passing through the region in dramatic numbers in mid-September when flight conditions are favorable.
And here I am, compelled again.
I have memories that hold strong of times up on Pack Monadnock as well as other hawkwatch outposts. I wrote about a day on Montana’s Bridger Mountains when over 100 golden eagles passed close overhead. Eagles, with wingspans greater than six feet, cast large shadows. I remember eagle shadows moving along the Bridger ridgeline.
I wrote about one late afternoon up on Pack Monadnock when broad-winged hawks seemingly fell out of the sky as black silhouettes against blue sky, wings wide on a glide. The swirling eddies of hawks repeatedly riding thermal lift high to coast south had reached journey’s end for that particular day.
Down they came, small black figures against September’s deep-blue sky, dispersing to their individual overnight roosts in the valley below. How many? I saw 50 or thereabouts. There were more than I, a lone observer, could see.
I remember the silence of it all, a silence that added to the experience. Birds in groups seldom are silent.
Last Sunday afternoon hawks weren’t falling out of the sky. Instead a broad river of black shapes flowed overhead, the same black silhouettes against blue sky, wings fixed in a glide, not a wing wave or flap among the hundreds that became one-thousand and continued on to 1,300.
Again the silence of this stream of living beings gave them dignity. I’ve seen a thousand sandhill cranes rise from the Platte River in Nebraska in a ringing din of noise, and equal numbers of noisy ducks rise from the Merrimack River when spooked by an eagle.
This river of hawks flowed by, silent and steady in a long, broad flight formation, each individual maintaining its small space in the formation, no one rushing the river, all going with the flow.
The numbers. The silence. A hope fulfilled: to be, one day, in the right place at the right time to be a witness to such an event, to be overwhelmed by such an event.
Later, talking with Ann, a hawkwatch friend I’ve seen for decades of Septembers up on Pack, I said I was struggling for words to describe what we had witnessed.
“Spiritual,” she said. One word.
There were tears and hugs and jubilant thumbs-up, although the job of counting continued. On Sunday, the 3-4 p.m. hour saw 3,153 broadwings.
The day’s total for migrating hawks was 5,290, a record for New Hampshire Audubon’s hawkwatch site. We had thought the prior day’s 3,643 was a record that would hold a lot longer than a day.
As for the 1,300 broadwings we watched stream overhead as one continuous flow, somewhere to the south they again would find a column of rising heat to circle within, rising higher and higher. Called a “kettle,” this swirling, rising eddy of hawks looks to be as disorderly as their pealing off is orderly. When thermal lift—from heat rising off earth—plays out, they set their wings to glide south in search of the next lift high.
All the way to Central America and on beyond.
At day’s end, I wonder where they dispersed to roost, and if anyone was witness to their falling from the sky.
The photo shows a group of hawkwatchers reluctant to leave the mountain on Sunday. Park closing time had arrived, and many people who had helped with the day’s count had left.
We have a tradition of taking a photo when the 10,000th hawk is counted. Not every year reaches that mark. Last year’s photo shows three hawkwatchers bundled in parkas, wool hats and gloves on October 13 when a sharp-shinned hawk was the 10,000th migrant.
Not every day at the site is a warm, sunny day in September.
Audubon’s annual hawkwatch celebration was Saturday. Some 200 people gathered for the release of a rehabilitated hawk back to the wild. There’s a raffle, T-shirts for sale, complimentary apples, and much good cheer.
Thousands of hawks didn’t pass over the midday group but a bald eagle came into easy view, soon to be harassed by a goshawk who in turn was harassed by a sharp-shinned hawk.
A goshawk is large, but when viewed next to the eagle it shrank to unrecognizable size while the “sharpie” looked more like a butterfly.
There was an appreciative buzz among us humans, grounded below.
I’m not a counter. My pleasure is helping visitors to the site see the hawks. When they see hawks kettling high—with binoculars, scope or naked eye—they can’t help exclaim. The hope—always—is that the experience will build stronger connections with the natural world.
Ken Klapper, the Audubon staffer who keeps the count, has two thumbs up in the photo. The others pictured are very good spotters and counters.
Each September, my hawkwatch friend Ann and I reminisce about past-year highlights. We have a new shared memory: a river of hawks flowing by in a sea of blue, blue sky, so silent, so profound.
