October 18: Blueberry barrens

Over crimson fields:

migrating hawks, milkweed fluff

whirling with snowflakes.

 

Posted with Blogsy

October 26: Clarry Hill

Spent this afternoon up on Clarry Hill in Union, surrounded by blueberry barrens, watching hawks soaring southward over the coastal mountains.

 

Kestrel hovering

Burnished fields, wind picking up

That's my heart out there

 

Posted with Blogsy

March 30: The hawk counter's dreams

Even in her sleep

she sees swirling kettles

of vultures overhead.

Posted with Blogsy

March 29: Hawk Watch

Spent several hours on Bradbury Mountain this afternoon at the Spring Hawk Watch there that's sponsored by my friends at Freeport Wild Bird Supply. The air felt postively springlike for a while; teens were showing up at the summit in shorts and tank tops. Several eagles, red-tails, vultures, and other raptors cruised overhead, along with other migrants--robins, Great Blue Herons, and geese. Before I realized, several hours had passed.

 

Distracted by hawks,

I forget for awhile

the lingering chill.

Posted with Blogsy

April 19: Hawk Watch

As I drove to the hawk watch on Bradbury Mountain this morning, a thick fog shrouded the coast. The radio was full of news and speculation about the Boston Marathon bombers. One had been killed in a shoot-out last night, the other on the loose. The thought of the entire city of Boston on lockdown gave me chills. 

We turned off the news, climbed up to the summit as the fog began to burn off. Birds sang in the trees--Palm and Pine Warblers, my first Brown Creeper of the spring, trilling junco. And soon, the hawks began to come. All day long they flew past. It was a thing of beauty.

Fog lifts, birds sing.

All day hawks stream northward,

a welcome distraction.

April 21: Broad-winged Hawks

Three-hundred ninety-seven broad-winged hawks were counted at the Bradbury Mountain hawk watch today. That's a lot of hawks. That's a good portion of the 653 total that have been seen from the hawk watch this month. Derek Lovitch, the official counter today, commented with his report that small kettles of broad-wings were moving through early and very high, visible only against the clouds.

I wasn't outside much today, so didn't have an opportunity to look for any hawks. (Yesterday I saw, perched roadside, my first and only broad-wing of the year so far.) But I could see enough out the window to know that big, fluffy, rain-saturated cumulus clouds were rolling through all day, at one point a bit thunderously. Knowing now that hundreds of hawks were swirling overhead while I worked away at my desk is a bit disconcerting. All that motion, all those feathered bodies being pulled northward, and I wasn't a part of it in any way.

During Fall migration, hawk watchers migrate to Mexico's narrowest isthmus. Because broad-wings and many other raptors don't like to fly over water, they don't fly over the Gulf of Mexico like many other migrants heading for Central and South America. Instead, they stay above land, funneling down the body of Mexico on their way south. The birds obviously become most concentrated where the country constricts. Hawk watchers in Veracruz, a city on the Gulf side of the isthmus, have counted 100,000 broad-wings in a day, and 2 million during a season. Pretty much all the broad-wings in the world pass over this point. A small portion of those hawks traveled over Bradbury Mountain south of here today, and a portion of those traveled over my head as they followed the ridges of the Camden Hills. It was going on all morning, and I missed it. But I love thinking about it, trying to get my head around the incredible miracle of that journey.

Kettles of broad-wings
carried by rain clouds northward.
And I, unaware.