Hawkwatchers gather for autumn ritual

Hawkwatchers climb mountains and brave cold weather and loneliness to count migratory raptors each autumn.

We're perched on a pinnacle of bleached rocks high atop a Pennsylvania mountain. The November wind bites our hands and faces and below us the valley looks like an oversized model railroad, with corduroy fields and matchbox houses. We're focused on the northern sky.

"Bird over the rounded oak," a hawk counter calls and we raise our binoculars to scan the horizon. First a speck in the sky, the hawk takes shape as it glides in our direction. The bird maintains a steady course and passes quickly, high overhead.

"Definitely an accipiter," the counter says. His cold fingers wrap stiffly around a pencil. "It could have been a sharpshinned hawk but it was too big. A Cooper's hawk," he decides, and adds the bird to his list.

I've come to Waggoner's Gap in South Central Pennsylvania, to sit on a mountain that juts into the hawks' southern migration route. Every year hawks, falcons and eagles, known collectively as raptors, leave their summer breeding grounds in the north to migrate as far south as Central America, where food is more plentiful.

In an annual autumn ritual, volunteer hawk counters climb to lookouts on mountain ridges that line the hawks' migration route, to identify and list birds that pass the observation posts.

Hawkwatching can be a cold, lonely pursuit and those drawn to the mountain explain the attraction in different ways. Kim VanFleet, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania counts hawks at Waggoner's Gap. For her, seeing a golden eagle was the spark that lit her love for hawkwatching.

"Being on the mountain puts things into perspective for me and lets me see where I fit into the ecosystem," says VanFleet, a biology student at Dickinson College. She and her husband Glen have been hawkwatchers since 1979. They've been data coordinators at Waggoner's Gap since 1987. Last year the counters at Waggoner's Gap put in 1,100 hours, the most for any hawkwatch in the country.

"It became a kind of contest to see how many hours we could put in up there," VanFleet says.

A counter must be able to recognize the breed of a bird as it passes quickly overhead, sometimes at great distances from the observer.

"If you want to identify hawks, you have to start by getting familiar with the different breeds," Van Fleet says. "Then one day you make a guess when you're on the mountain and hope nobody laughs." Don Mason, another hawkwatcher, counts hawks while working as a truckstop minister. A beeper makes Mason available to his truck-driving parishioners while he's on the mountain.

"Going to the mountain gives me a sense of satisfaction," Mason says, "I like knowing that this part of nature is functioning according to plan."

A prerequisite for hawkwatchers is the ability to spend hours alone on a cold mountaintop with only the birds and the wind for company. But being alone doesn't bother Mason, who says, "Being up there alone lets me shut out the world."

Mark McConaughy is an archaeologist for the State Museum in Harrisburg and a hawkwatcher in his spare time. Attracted to the solitude of hawkwatching, he counts hawks alone on Blue Mountain, near Harrisburg. He compiles tallies and submits his results along with those from other observation posts.

"It gets me away from work and from people," McConaughy says, "I like being alone with my thoughts. Sometimes I get bored, but I don't mind. I think most of us who go up there are a little nuts anyway."

Indeed, hawk counters have a reputation among other birders for their eccentricity.

Larry Lewis, who leads birding expeditions for his company, Early Bird Nature Tours doesn't count hawks.

"Me? No. It takes a certain kind of person to sit up there and count birds all day. You have to have a lot of patience. You have to be a little bit crazy, too."

Hawk Mountain, a popular hawkwatch in central Pennsylvania, attracts visitors by the busload in autumn. It gained notoriety in the thirties when conservationists discovered that hunters were using the mountain as a shooting gallery, picking off thousands of hawks as they passed the mountain along their migration route. The slaughter finally stopped when the Emergency Conservation Society bought Hawk Mountain in 1934.

Hawk counters at Hawk Mountain were first to observe the decline of hawk populations in the 1960s and 70s, due to the insecticide DDT, which weakened the bird's eggshells. Since then, aggressive reintroduction programs and pesticide bans have led to significant increases in the birds' numbers.

Waggoner's Gap doesn't share Hawk Mountain's bloody history, but birds have been tallied there for many years. In addition to hawk counters, the mountain also hosts people like me, who are there simply to marvel at the hawks.

I've been going to Waggoner's Gap since 1990. I love the predictability of the annual migration. Each year from August to December thousands of hawks pass the mountain as they move south. I'm also drawn by the unpredictable nature of my experiences there.

The flow of birds out of the north is erratic, depending on weather, wind and other variables and some days few birds pass the observation post. But on a good day, 50 hawks may pass by Waggoner's Gap in an hour.

I'm also drawn by unpredictable delights. A rare peregrine falcon may arrow by at high speed, while a bald eagle, with its seven foot wingspan, is a wonder so large it can be seen for miles, as it powers slowly by the hawkwatch.

Hawkwatching gives me a chance to experience wonder. And the wonder is what draws us year after year to visit the mountaintops in autumn.