(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange recently spent some time observing migrating hawks and other raptors, and he’s gotten a lot out of it – including a stiff neck from looking up.
(LANGE) I’m perched on a ridge in Pennsylvania, above an unbroken forest of oak and maple. All around me are at least a hundred people in fleece vests and pants that unzip to form shorts, armed with $1000 binoculars. Except perhaps at a funeral, it’s the quietest crowd I’ve ever experienced. They gaze across the valley – the way the English used to in Hastings and Dover, spotting German bombers. Now and then someone calls out something like, "Three broad-wings above Number Three!" and a hundred pairs of binoculars swivel like antiaircraft guns.
We’re at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, eighty miles northwest of Philadelphia in the folded Appalachians. The second two weeks of September are the prime periods for spotting migrating raptors headed for winter quarters. Sometimes, thousands of eagles, hawks, and vultures pass over this spot on a good day: a cool night followed by a warm, sunny morning. The cool air in the valleys warms and rises in thermals, which the birds use to cruise south.
They try to follow broken ground, where a breeze flowing over the hilltops lumps up much like water in a rapid river. Rising as high as possible in each updraft, they leave it to glide south till they find another, using as little energy as possible. Hawks need to eat about 15% of their body weight each day, which translates to two chipmunks.
We often hear that Nature provides. Actually, Nature coincides. The climate here is ideal for oak trees. Oaks produce acorns; acorns feed squirrels and chipmunks; and they feed the passing hawks when they pause for the night to hunt. Raptors picking this ridge at its northern end can cruise its currents for 300 miles. They arrive here, often, in "kettles" of sometimes thousands of birds. And the hawks feed the local economy when the bird-watchers show up by the thousand and fill every hostelry within miles. It all works together beautifully.
Not long ago fish and wildlife departments paid bounties for hawks. Hunters converged on Hawk Mountain and slew hundreds in a day. Then in 1934 a lady from New York City bought the property, posted it to hunting, and hired wardens to enforce the prohibition. With the end of bounties on hawks, their subsequent protection, and the influx of thousands of bird-watchers, the poaching finally ended.
"Osprey above Number Two!" somebody says. (The bumps on the ridge across the way are numbered.) All the binoculars swing to that spot as a familiar crooked-wing shape slides southwest. The official counter makes a note on his pad. A pair of broad-winged hawks soars easily past from right to left. Then somebody hollers, "Here comes a kestrel!" A falcon the size of a blue jay – the Jack Russell of raptors – attacks the broad-wings, who get away as fast as they can. The kestrel screeches triumphantly. Somebody observes, "They’re just born with an attitude." Yeah; I’ve known people just like that.
This is Willem Lange on Hawk Mountain, and believe it or not, this is work!
(TAG) You can find more commentaries from Willem Lange on line at VPR-dot-net.