Putney, Vt.
We were at 1,600 feet, surrounded by a sky that held scattered clouds but no danger of rain, with the Connecticut River Valley spread out below us like a mottled green quilt. It was fairly cool—in the high 50s—and there was a wind from the southwest gusting to 15 mph or so. Less than perfect conditions, then, for counting raptors as they passed on their fall migration south.
“Maybe it will warm up,” a man named Jim who had hiked ahead of us said. “We’ll get some thermals, then.”
Hawks like to ride thermals and we were here as observers and volunteers for the annual Putney Mountain Hawk Watch. The word “hawks” is used in the general sense. We have come to see birds of prey, raptors. We might very well see eagles. Seven had been seen passing this spot three days earlier and over 50 so far this year.
We might also see falcons. Spotters are especially keen to see peregrines. More, perhaps, than any of the species people come here to view and count, the peregrine is what they have in mind when they use the phrase “bird of prey.” The peregrine is an almost sublime killer. He is an avian predator, taking his victims on the wing in a swirl of feathers. In a dive, the peregrine can reach speeds of more than 200 mph. Like many of the birds people come here to view and to count, peregrines have made a comeback from the endangered list. They are even routinely found in Manhattan, nesting on the ledges and eaves of tall apartment buildings and feeding on plump urban pigeons, which are, for the peregrine, easy pickings.
Then there are the birds properly called hawks—sharp-shinned and broad-winged, among others. There are more of them, by far, than any other species. Some 6,000 had been spotted so far this season by people like us who come up carrying their binoculars to spend a day—or a few hours of it, anyway—identifying the birds and keeping the count.
It is strictly a volunteer operation that has been going on since 1974. People do it for the love—to view the birds and to be part of the recovery of many raptor species that appeared, at one time, to be on the way out. They were once killed indiscriminately by people who considered them wolves of the sky, and then there were the pesticides that the birds concentrated in their systems and that made their eggshells fatally weak and thin.
But the birds have rallied and now there are good counts here on Putney Mountain and at other places around the country where people go to watch them fly, to feel that primal thrill you get in the presence of something lethal.
There were four of us. Two young girls—one 10 and the other 7 years old—plus my wife and me. We had hiked up carrying binoculars and lunch in a backpack. We also carried two of those folding canvas chairs. No reason not to be comfortable.
I’d done this before, and it had seemed like a fine way to spend a day. There were people to talk to, birds to look for and to admire once you had spotted them, and a great restful view. But I wondered about the kids.
On a good day, as many as 2,000 raptors might be spotted from Putney Mountain. On the kind of day we had drawn, the number might fall short of 100. And how compelling would the sighting of a soaring bird be to a young person proficient in all the digital arts? Could the high, solitary profile of a bald eagle match the thrill-a-second stimulus of a video game?
Well, we would soon find out. Call it an experiment. How long can a modern young person survive when digitally deprived? And will the old atavistic impulses survive the Internet? Will Homo digitus thrill to the sight of a raptor on the wing?
Beats me, I thought.
There were a half-dozen people just off the trail in a clearing at the top of the mountain when we arrived. They had been here for a couple of hours and seen only three or four broadwings.
“And an osprey,” one of them said. “That was pretty cool.”
The osprey had also been on the endangered list and recovered even more dramatically than the peregrine. Not very many pass this way. But not long ago, none would have. Go where there is a lot of water, and you will see plenty of them with their formidable nests built in the high branches of big trees or, when there is nothing else, on the tops of power poles.
We set up our chairs where we wouldn’t be crowding anyone and took out the binoculars and the books and charts we had brought along to help with identifications. We scanned the sky for a few minutes, looking high where the birds would be clearly silhouetted against the white clouds and then lower, where they would be harder to see against the trees, most of which were still green but showing the color that would be full and vibrant in a couple of weeks.
There was another group of spotters in a cleared area 30 or 40 yards away. They had set up an owl decoy. Hawks are antagonized by owls for some reason and will attack them. The decoy is good for bringing in sharp-shins and Cooper’s hawks, another lethal avian predator.
We had been watching for 20 or 30 minutes when a Cooper’s hawk made a pass at the owl decoy. It happened without warning and was over quickly. Still, it was some action, and the girls were impressed.
“That,” said Amelia, the little one, “was really cool.”
The people who had been there when we arrived soon left. The man who had come in ahead of us stayed, and we made small talk. He came here often during the migration and helped keep the official count.
We needed more sun to warm the air, he said again. Once we had some thermals, the birds would come. The birds follow this line of mountains using the rising warm air to gain altitude without using a lot of energy. Each wing-beat burns calories and the birds have a long way to go. Over 4,000 miles in the case of the broadwings.
The birds climb one thermal and then soar further down the valley, slowly losing altitude, until they find another thermal and climb again. They will go for several minutes, sometimes, without a single beat of their wings. Soaring in a way that makes you wish you could do the same.
While we waited for the thermals to develop we watched for the other famous migratory creature—the monarch. It has been hard times for this gaudy butterfly.
The decline of the monarch was once thought to be due to the logging, in Mexico, of oyamel fir trees. But that was only a partial explanation. A bigger problem for the monarch is the decline of milkweed.
The monarch lays its eggs on milkweed and the hideously ugly caterpillars eat almost nothing else. There must be sufficient milkweed along the monarch’s route north to sustain the four generations that mate and hatch along the way. But the milkweed is being remorselessly done in by farmers, highway crews, and people who just don’t want it in their lawns.
We’d seen a few monarchs this year; our count was up to 24. We told the girls to keep their eyes peeled for more butterfly sightings.
“I thought we were here to watch for hawks,” the older one said.
“We are.”
The implicit question was . . . “Well, then, where are they?”
But it wasn’t asked, and nobody seemed bored.
Boredom, in fact, never entered the picture. For the entire course of the afternoon, the girls’ sharp young eyes scanned the sky, sometimes through binoculars and
sometimes unaided. The older girl saw a broadwing before anyone. It was the fourth or fifth of this slow day.
A few vultures drifted by. We counted them, and I made a note, even though they are the furthest thing from raptors. It’s hard to romanticize a carrion eater.
“You know how they find the dead things they eat?” my wife asked.
“How?” Brantley, the older girl, said.
“By smell.”
“Really?” the younger one said.
“I didn’t know birds have noses.”
“Most don’t.”
“I would hate to be a turkey vulture,” the little one said.
Which led to a discussion of just what kind of bird you would want to be, if you could be a bird.
My choice was to be a great, soaring seabird. The older girl said she would like to be a hummingbird.
“We see some of them come by here on their way south,” a spotter who had just joined us said. “Not many.”
Hummingbirds, monarchs, raptors . . . but not much action today.
Still, we stayed at it. Other spotters came and went. The count crept up slowly. A few more broadwings. The occasional sharp-shin. These were exciting but not thrilling in the way of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Windhover,” that
Even so, nobody said anything about leaving and finding something to do that was fun. We stayed up there and kept looking at the sky and talking about raptors and other birds with the new arrivals.
We had stayed more than four hours and our count was barely at 20 when we began packing up. We simply had things to do, or we might have stayed longer, watching the empty sky and hoping for a hawk.
Then, the little one looked up from filling her backpack and said, “There’s one.”
A dozen pairs of binoculars went up in the direction where she was pointing.
“It looks like a peregrine,” the older one said. She had a sheet of paper showing the silhouette of the various raptors, and she had been studying it. “See the pointy wings.”
“That’s what it is,” one of the veteran spotters said. “Good eyes.”
The great bird did what great birds do. It soared majestically against the vivid blue sky, riding the thermal so that it didn’t need to waste energy beating its wings. It must have held its small space in the sky, rising with the heated air, for five minutes or so before dropping quickly and heading down the valley to find another thermal to climb.
“That,” the older girl said, “was so cool.”
And we were all a little sorry to leave.
Later on, I checked the count for that day and for the whole season. On the Internet, naturally. That was only the second peregrine spotting of the season and to repeat Brantley’s insight, “How cool is that?”
Cooler, I think, than any video game, and I believe she and her sister would agree.
Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
