Golden Eagle Days (Part 2)

Continued from November.

photo by Todd Katzner

Then came the great change. After a mild, misty start on December first, the thermometer hit 65 degrees and then began to plummet as the wind picked up. The northwest winds had finally arrived a month late and with it, the following morning, came the eagle researchers. They had a third radio-tag and they meant to use it.

By 10:10 a.m., when I arrived in the blind, they had already counted 12 golden eagles. Behind me in the blind they had a red-tailed hawk in a can. On this bright, cold, windy day they expected visitors from Powdermill Nature Reserve, and they planned a banding demonstration of a red-tail in case they didn’t trap an eagle. That red-tail, Lanzone told me, was “one of the smallest I ever saw.” And then number 13 golden eagle flew past.

After that, there was a lull, but at 10:45 number 14 appeared. Lanzone played the bait even after the eagle flew out of sight.

“They could come in from behind the spruce grove,” Lanzone explained.

The guests arrived, including the head of the Powdermill Nature Reserve, Dave Smith, and a local board member, John Dawes. Other employees from both The National Aviary and Powdermill also watched. The blind was jam packed with eager spectators, and the pressure was on.

But no eagle appeared. Finally, Lanzone weighed, measured and banded the little red-tail on its right leg. That red-tail may have been little but it was mighty and bit Lanzone on the finger, unlike the previous one they had banded.

“All of them have different personalities, like people,” Lanzone said.

In the midst of that, number 15 golden eagle flew past. As numbers 17 and 18 flew over without coming down to the bait, Todd Katzner delivered a mini-lecture on eastern golden eagles. Because easterns are smaller than westerns, it’s a “reasonable probability that it’s a subspecies,” he explained, “even though no work has been done to establish it.”

He also said that in addition to possibly killing golden eagles, wind mills on the mountaintops might deflect the eagles off good lift areas along the ridges.

Then three more golden eagles diverted our attention as they flew up from behind the ridge, and by 12:10 we had counted 21.

“Come on, eagles,” Lanzone muttered under his breath when numbers 22 and 23 appeared with a red-tail on their right. Then they dropped below the tree line again.

Mike Lanzone with the bow net (photo: Todd Katzner)

The visitors grew hungry as lunch time came and went. Then another red-tail flew straight from the ridge to the bait. Lanzone sprang the net and made a perfect catch. As they were taking photos of the hawk out in the field with the visitors looking on, an adult golden eagle flew over, giving all of us a perfect view.After weighing, measuring, and banding that hawk, the visitors helped to release it. It hadn’t been the golden eagle we had been hoping for, but no one could deny the excitement of watching the beautiful red-tail take the bait.

The visitors headed back down for their belated lunches, but I remained watching with the researchers. (I had already learned to carry lots of snack food and water.) Altogether, we counted 29 golden eagles. Then the flight was over at 2:30 p.m. even though we continued to peer intently through the blind windows for another hour. All we saw were two flocks of tundra swans.

On December 4 it was 19 degrees and windy. By the time I reached the blind, shortly after 9:00 a.m., 11 golden eagles had already flown past. Number 10 had almost come in, Lanzone told me.

Snow flurries seemed to slow down the flight, although numbers 12 and 13 flew past. Again lunchtime came and went and then, at 2:12 p.m. Lanzone lowered the flaps and whispered, “She’s coming. Nobody move.”

An enormous adult female golden eagle came down on the bait 25 feet from the blind. We had an eye-filling look at this fierce creature as Lanzone sprang the bow net. It snagged on a broken stem of goldenrod. The eagle hesitated and then took off fast. Lanzone was furious. After two immature males, they were eager to catch a mature female.

To add insult to injury, while they were re-setting the trap, two more golden eagles flew past. Then two more, traveling as a pair, also sailed over. Lanzone told me that golden eagles will rarely stoop to bait when they are together.

They spotted another single, number 19. The flaps went down again and tension was high in the blind, but that one too ignored the bait.

We did catch another red-tail. This one came over the ridge. I released it after it was weighed, measured, and banded. Or I tried to release it, holding it firmly by its feet and laying it on its back, as Lanzone instructed, but it refused to turn over and fly off as it was supposed to. It still thought it was caught. Finally, it stood up and spread its wings, posing for photos for several minutes, before Lanzone came out of the blind and helped it to realize that it could fly off.

And that was it for the day. But when Lanzone later checked a hawk count site on the web, he learned that with our 19 goldens we had had, by far, the most goldens in the state both that day and on December 2 with 29.

The following day two goldens passed by 10:00 a.m. It was 22 degrees and snow flurries often obscured Bald Eagle Ridge. Lanzone, Miller, and baby Phoebe were in the blind, and after three fruitless hours of watching, Lanzone asked if I could show him the big talus slope down the ridge where our son Steve had often observed raptors.

Tired of sitting in the blind, I said, “Sure,” and off we went to see if any golden eagles were flying past there.

After a mile, we reached the talus slope, which spreads halfway down the ridge. I picked my way down over the rocks for a short ways and then waited as Lanzone looked over the entire talus slope. He returned after nearly an hour very excited. He was almost certain that the golden eagles would be flying at eye level along this side of the ridge. If only he could get a blind and trap set up there. But where? And how? We walked back along the old, rock-choked, logging road and down the steep Steiner/Scott Trail as he tried to figure out if it would be possible to get a four wheel drive vehicle with supplies within a reasonable distance of the talus slope.After a still, warm day, December 7 dawned cold and overcast with snow squalls and a northwest wind. Lanzone had emailed me late the previous night to say that he and Miller would be here, but he planned to return to the talus slope.

Miller arrived after 10:00 a.m. with Phoebe and told me a story that I could scarcely believe. Lanzone and Lewis Grove, who worked at Powdermill also, had arrived before dawn in a four wheel drive, which they had driven up the Steiner/Scott Trail and down the rocky logging road. Then, making 18 trips in the dark with headlamps on up and down the treacherous, ice and snow-covered rocks, they had set up both a blind and bait. Already they had seen an eagle.

The talus slope blind in October 2007 (photo: Dave Bonta)

As Miller was setting up, they called on her cell phone to say that three more golden eagles had come by. A few minutes later I looked up and there they were above the ridge.

Then the snow flurried hard and a snow fog developed, which nearly hid the ridges. But shortly after 1:00 p.m., while it was still snowing, Miller spotted a male Cooper’s hawk sitting in a nearby tree. In the hawk came to the bait. It was thoroughly tangled in the bow net, and she patiently untangled it. She put a band on it, and I released it. Unlike the red-tail, the Cooper’s hawk exploded into the air.

In the meantime, Lanzone and Grove counted nine golden eagles before the flurries turned to squalls. By evening, two inches of snow had fallen. That evening Miller, Lanzone, and Phoebe spent the night in our guesthouse.

Still another windy day, 14 degrees and clear. Miller, Phoebe and I occupied the spruce grove blind and Lanzone the talus slope blind. But he missed three golden eagles because the bait had spooked the eagles.

Later, I heard from Lanzone that still another golden eagle had flown in low to look over the situation. That one had landed on a rock next to the bait and bow trap. The eagle had studied it some more, and had finally flown off.

The trapping spot on the talus slope in October 2007 (photo: Dave Bonta)

With that, the golden eagle saga here ended for the year. Comparing notes with Miller, Lanzone discovered that he saw many more golden eagles at the talus slope than Miller did in the blind. A large number stay below the ridgetop and even those that do pop up are flying too fast to stop for a look, except for the female that got away.

And the researchers did get the chance to use that third radio-tag. On January 5 wildlife officials in West Virginia contacted them about an immature male golden eagle that had been caught in a leghold trap for several days. The National Aviary’s Director of Veterinary Services and Animal Programs, Dr. Pilar Fish, said that “both sides of his leg were cut down to the bone from the trap, and the bone was crushed on one side, though not broken completely…He was dehydrated, stressed and infection had set in.” But after three months of expert rehabilitation, the bird was healthy enough to release, on March 22, where they had found him near Scherr, West Virginia.

In the meantime, I followed the other two eagles’ progress on The National Aviary’s website. The Thanksgiving eagle (called eagle 39) spent his winter mostly in southeastern West Virginia and the other eagle tagged on the Allegheny Front (eagle 40) wandered between southeastern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. In March both migrated back through our area on their way to northern Quebec above tree line. Eagle 39 stayed above the western bulge of Labrador in Quebec and Eagle 40 at the edge of Ungava Bay. Both are probably defending territory, according to Katzner, because they have been staying put.

Eagle 41, the rehabbed bird, remained near his release site until May 10, and then he headed for Canada like the other two. He too ended up at the edge of Ungava Bay.

“It takes an eagle about five years to reach maturity and nobody is really sure what happens to eastern golden eagles in the time between when they are hatched and when they begin the breeding phase of their life,” Katzner said.

With the radio-tagging of three immature males, they’re beginning to find out. We will continue to follow the paths of eagles 39, 40, and 41 on The National Aviary website, and we’ll hope that this year one of the radio-tagged golden eagles will be caught on our talus slope.

Mike releases one of the two eagles radio-tagged at the Allegheny Front Hawkwatch in November 2006 (photo: Todd Katzner)

__________

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has partnered with the National Aviary and the Powdermill Nature Reserve, which is the field station of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, on the golden eagle study. They have given a $25,000 State Wildlife Grant that will add to the substantial funding by the National Aviary and the Carnegie Museum. Other researchers who are assisting in the study, officially titled, “Assessing Conservation Needs of Eastern Golden Eagles in Pennsylvania” are David Brandes of Lafayette College and Dan Ombalski of the Tussey Mountain Hawkwatch. A white paper recently released by the five researchers, Raptors and Wind Energy Development in the Central Appalachians: Where We Stand [PDF], says that “because of their demography, migration, and winter flight behavior, and high vulnerability to wind turbines, we consider Eastern Golden Eagles to be the eastern U.S. species at highest risk of population-scale impacts from wind energy development.”

Looking for Winter Raptors

As citizen scientists become more numerous in the birding world, there is no end to the monitoring projects we can engage in. Take the WRS, for example, which stands for the Winter Raptor Survey. The brainchild of birder Greg Grove, it seems like the easiest of exercises–driving around a specific area in the middle of winter and counting and identifying winter raptors, including vultures.

Grove first launched the project in the winter of 2001 because he likes to use his birding skills to add to ornithological knowledge and is particularly interested in raptors. If the survey continues for many winters, he thinks it should be able to document population changes and the ages and sex composition of wintering open-country raptors–red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, northern harriers and rough-legged hawks–that can easily be seen from roads. By counting vultures–both black and turkey–in the survey, Grove hopes to add to growing evidence that wintering vultures have been expanding northward. He also encourages participants to report other raptors and their numbers as well as wintering owls and shrike invasions.

Since midwinter is a slow time for Pennsylvania birders, Grove figured they would be glad for an excuse to get out during the survey period in late January and early February. I know we were. When I first heard about the survey on the Pennsylvania Birds Listserv, I was eager to participate, but my husband Bruce and I wanted to go out with expert birders before doing our own survey. And what better ones to go out with than Greg Grove and fellow birder Dave Kyler on their survey of northern Huntingdon County?

So in early February on a sunny day with a light wind the four of us covered 30 slow miles over back roads, frequently jumping out of the car for closer looks at a bird or to scan the sky with our binoculars. Kyler nearly always spotted the birds first, and Grove was the designated driver. Bruce and I sat in the back of Grove’s Ford Explorer, trying to keep our hands and feet warm, because even though we were theoretically in a closed car, we were continually cranking the windows down for a better view or opening the doors and leaping out for a positive identification.

Our first bird was an adult red-tail sitting in a tree at the edge of a field. Next we identified the gray wings of a male American kestrel perched on top of one telephone pole and the rufous wings of a female kestrel on the line itself, followed by a pair of mature red-tails and another male kestrel.

As we drove along, Kyler gave us a running commentary on the bird life of the area, what Bruce later called Kyler’s “birding geography of place.”

“These are good fields for vesper and grasshopper sparrows in the spring,” he said of one place. Another area with white pine trees he referred to as “red-shouldered hawk territory. Red-shoulders like bottomlands. I’ve heard barred owls here too. Red-shoulders and barred owls go together.” We saw no red-shoulders there but later, in bottomlands, a red-shoulder flew out and across the road into the edge ofa small pine plantation and there it sat, giving all of us a good look at this “bonus” raptor.

We reached a lovely vista of fields and Tussey Mountain and jumped out for what at first looked like a turkey vulture. But we saw white where it shouldn’t have been, on the bird’s wings and tail, and the bird was huge. Out came the telescopes–Kyler’s and ours’–which gave us marvelous looks at an immature bald eagle sailing down the ridge.

“That’s another bonus,” Kyler said.

From that vantagepoint, we also spotted three black vultures.

“They have ridiculously short tails and flap more than turkey vultures,” Grove explained.

Later two more black vultures flew directly over the car. Seen from beneath, their outer wing tips are silver.

“They nest out here,” Kyler volunteered.

Later, we watched a female kestrel dive down into a field and fly up with prey in her talons and Kyler’s sharp eyes spotted still another bonus bird–a sharp-shinned hawk sitting on a tree branch at the edge of a patch of woods. In two and a half hours we tallied 12 red-tails, 7 kestrels, 10 black vultures, 1 bald eagle, 1 sharp-shin, and 1 red-shoulder. We also saw a large shrub in the middle of a field filled with bluebirds, two killdeer in another field, two northern flickers, a pileated woodpecker and the only bald cypress tree in Huntingdon County or maybe even in Pennsylvania.

As Kyler told it, “A farmer who fought in the Civil War brought the seeds back from the South and planted them beside a stream.” Sure enough, there was a large bald cypress, denizen of southern swamps, surrounded by its “knees,” growing along a stream with northern tree species.

To cap off our day, as Bruce and I drove home, we startled an immature red-tail sitting on our hollow road, eating a fox squirrel it had killed just seconds before. Unfortunately, we couldn’t count it. Still, it seemed like a good omen for our own survey.

Fired with enthusiasm, Bruce and I set out on a similar sunny, breezy day at 10:25 a.m. to cruise the back roads of Sinking Valley in Blair County. Since our Laurel Ridge Trail overlooks this bucolic valley, the winter raptors we see on our mountaintop farm are probably the same raptors that hunt in the valley.

Bruce had mapped out a 35-mile route and we expected to see the same number of raptors we had in northern Huntingdon County. But we didn’t. After two and a half frustrating hours we had tallied 4 red-tails and 2 kestrels. I was almost embarrassed to send in our total to Grove. But as he later wrote in his article for Pennsylvania Birds, “‘negative’ data is every bit as important as the ‘positive’ data from ‘raptor-rich’ counties in providing a complete picture of winter raptor and vulture distribution in Pennsylvania.”

However, I couldn’t help envying some of the other participants who posted their survey results on the Pennsylvania Bird Listserv. “We had an incredible day of hawk watching in Perry County,” Steve Hoffman, Director of Conservation for Audubon Pennsylvania, wrote. In six hours and over 105 miles, he and three other observers counted 50 red-tails, 14 kestrels, 58 turkey vultures, 4 black vultures, 2 bald eagles, and 2 Cooper’s hawks plus pipits and horned larks.

Bill Etter and Cameron Rutt in Bucks County took time to tally 10 lesser black-backed gulls and a north-bound mixed flock of black birds that was at least three miles long and stretched form horizon to horizon, in addition to respectable numbers of open-country raptors, including an immature northern harrier and both vultures.

Most remarkable of all was Scott Fisher’s two hours at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area. Although his raptor list was relatively low–1 bald eagle, 2 red-tails, 8 turkey vultures, a kestrel and a Cooper’s hawk–his incidental birds were eye-popping–2000 tundra swans, 40,000 snow geese, 15,000 Canada geese, 2 American coots, 31 black ducks, 58 mallards, 6 northern pintails, 67 northern shovelers, 2 ruddy ducks, and 54 common mergansers!

The prize for grit and determination should probably go to Roger and Margaret Higbee of Indiana County. As they crested one hill on an ice-covered road, “our van began sliding backwards and did a 180-degree turn,” Margaret wrote. “Roger’s remarkable recovery kept us on the road, but neither of us wanted to try that hill again…(There weren’t any hawks up there anyway!!!)” In 102 miles they did see 33 red-tails, 7 kestrels, and 2 sharp-shins but no vultures.

But then only two vultures were seen in the whole northern and western Plateau section of Pennsylvania and they were black vultures in Lycoming County. As Dave Ferry reported, “The birds of the day had to be two black vultures…None of us had ever seen a black vulture in the Allegheny Plateau of northern Pennsylvania and I suppose it’s even more amazing considering it’s the middle of winter.”

Had they not been out there doing a WRS, those black vultures would have gone unrecorded. So too would have 170 more black vultures, 525 turkey vultures, 30 northern harriers, 1399 red-tails, 21 rough-legged hawks, and 392 kestrels in 56 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Other bonus species were a merlin and 3 peregrine falcons in Allegheny County, 3 long-eared owls in Lawrence County, a short-eared owl in Mercer County, a snowy owl in Union County and a northern shrike in Lackawanna County.

Already Grove was detecting trends. Of the 1,140 red-tails that were aged, 91% were adults and of the 332 kestrels that were sexed, 60% were male, results that were similar to 2001. Rough-legged hawks had decreased from 2001 but continued to be concentrated in the northern counties and a few valleys in the central Ridge and Valley area, and harriers, despite their low numbers, continued to be widely distributed across Pennsylvania except for the High Plateau counties. Furthermore, despite the increase of vulture numbers in the Ridge and Valley, few vultures had moved into the northern and western sections of Pennsylvania despite the warm winter.

Will these trends continue? Only time and the help of dedicated birders will tell.

—-

You must have e-mail to participate in the WRS. Contact Greg Grove at gwg2 [at] psu [dot] edu.

Alan’s Bench

We have a new bench on our property–a memorial bench–built to honor one of our youngest hunters. Seventeen-year-old Alan Harshberger died in a pickup truck collision, through no fault of his, on Memorial Day weekend 2000.

The bench was built by Tim Tyler, a hunter friend of ours who is a close friend of the Harshbergers. He situated the bench at the top of First Field tucked back in a grove of Norway spruce trees. There it overlooks the knoll where Alan had his hunting stand.

By November the waving green grasses that form a carpet for Alan’s Bench have turned beige. Stands of goldenrod and pearly everlasting have also dried and they gleam in November’s slanting sunlight.

The leaves have dropped from the trees on Alan’s Knoll, opening up a view of ridge after ridge, silver and blue in the distance and a dusky rose closeup. From Alan’s Bench we can see 55 miles on a clear autumn day and we name the mountains–Nittany Mountain, Egg Hill, Tussey Mountain, and our own Bald Eagle Ridge heading northeast to Williamsport.

Our ridge is one of the premier migratory routes for raptors and Alan’s Bench provides a front seat on the action. Last month we had a few good days of raptor-watching. In mid-October clouds scudded south across a blue sky and I spotted a sharp-shinned hawk high above and moving fast. It was followed by two red-tailed hawks. After a pause, another red-tail hovered for a few seconds and then flew on down the ridge, quickly followed by still another red-tail. Next came two sharpies, one right after the other, and an immature red-tail that performed a partial talon-drop as if practicing for next spring’s courting.

But October 27, when snow flurries alternated with sun and clouds and a biting wind blew from the northwest, I watched a succession of red-tails, four at a time, circling above Sapsucker Ridge. Another one hovered, but most red-tails soared straight down the ridge. It looked as if every red-tail in the north was flying south. There was rarely a moment when there wasn’t at least one red-tail in the sky. Altogether I counted 56 in half an hour.

Later, my husband Bruce went up to Alan’s Bench and reported the same numbers of red-tails still streaming south. To sit on Alan’s Bench, head back, feet on one of the slanting stools Tim later built, and watch those birds of the wind and clouds, is to lose myself in one of Nature’s greatest performances. And during lulls in the flight, my eyes turn to the spectacular gold, beige, brown, burnt orange, wine-red, pink, and purple-leaved trees of Laurel Ridge.

On autumn days when raptors are not migrating, I watch other birds–flocks of cedar waxwings and robins and once a yellow-bellied sapsucker that landed on a locust tree on Alan’s Knoll. Then it flew from tree to tree, resting on each briefly, before flying on over Sapsucker Ridge.

On that same early November day, warm breezes wafted over me from the southwest. Falling leaves, catching the upwelling of warm air, flew high above the ridge like birds, before beginning their inevitable twirling descent to the earth. Sixteen calling eastern bluebirds flew past and an orange sulphur butterfly spiraled up from the dried grasses, followed by a second one.

It seems as if birds, those creatures of earth and sky, are drawn to Alan’s Bench and Knoll. Back on the first day of summer, sitting on Alan’s Bench, I heard a harsh “shrack-shrack” call. A sharpie flew up and perched for a moment at the top of a dead locust in the center of Alan’s Knoll, giving me time to note its reddish breast and neck, speckled reddish belly, brown back blotched with white, and a banded, flat-edged tail. Then it dove back down into the leafy cover.

Blue jays appeared, first silently, then scolding, and the sharpie flew up to the top of another dead snag. Again I heard “shrack-shrack.” Again the sharpie dove down and again it came up, this time on still another tall snag while at least two blue jays silently watched it. But when the sharpie started to groom its breast feathers and under its wings, the blue jays moved off as if the raptor was no longer a threat.

Eastern towhees called; common yellowthroats sang; black-capped chickadees “dee-deed.” In the distance, a ruffed grouse drummed, a pileated woodpecker called, and a scarlet tanager sang. Next field sparrows and chipping sparrows sang. Then an American goldfinch undulated overhead and a crow flapped past not far from the sharpie, but the crow ignored the little raptor.

Suddenly, a blue jay flew in and, scolding loudly, dove at the sharpie before landing on a nearby snag. The blue jay watched the raptor for a few minutes and then dove just below the sharpie’s perch before flying to another tree as if in warning. The sharpie looked down as the blue jay dove, but remained stolidly on its perch and continued to groom itself.

Finally, the blue jay pushed its luck and landed directly below the sharpie’s perch. This was too much for the raptor and it dove down at the blue jay, “shrack-shracking” while the blue jay yelled “jay-jay.” The sharpie disappeared for a moment, reappeared in the first snag I saw it on, dove, “shrack-shracked” again, and again disappeared into the underbrush. It was like watching a live nature show while sitting in a comfortable chair. All around me birds continued to sing and fly. Chimney swifts seined the air above.

At last the sharpie show ended or so I thought. But as I got up and walked on I realized that the sharpie was sitting on the one snag hidden from Alan’s Bench by a live locust tree. Although it was a first year juvenile bird, judging by its still brown back, it had been resourceful enough to make it through the winter and was determined, that day, to catch a meal. So down it dove again as I continued my walk.

On the thirtieth of July I walked up to rest on Alan’s Bench and heard a peculiar, rattling, gargling sound–”ray,ray, ray”–that went on and on. Finally, I tracked it to an open, grassy area amid the spruces. Then I heard another, more deeply pitched rattle that sounded vaguely cuckoo-like. I sat on the ground to listen and wait.

At last I saw the wriggling tail of a young bird, the beige-brown top of its head, and its off-white face, and I heard the beginning of a cuckoo call. After much straining to see through the dense branches of the spruce tree, I spotted the black bill and red eye ring of an adult black-billed cuckoo. It had a caterpillar in its beak. Since both look-alike cuckoo parents feed fledglings, I didn’t know whether it was the male or female. I sat there for a long time watching as the parent encouraged its youngster to fly into deeper cover in the same tree. It floundered down, barely able to stay airborne. There seemed to be only one fully-feathered young. But apparently, because eggs are laid at infrequent intervals, black-billed cuckoo nestlings often vary in age so there might have been others still in the nest or the rest might have already flown off.

Like other black-billed cuckoo nestlings, it was in its climbing phase, a phase that lasts for about two weeks before it fledges. Once Francis H. Herrick, who studied the home life of the black-billed cuckoo back in 1935, observed three young birds leave their nest. The oldest one…”sat upright for some minutes and gazed into its outer world. Then, directing its attention to a small branch and ducking its head as if contemplating flight, with a leap it cleared the nest, and, catching hold of a twig, with both feet, it swung free with acrobatic dexterity. In another moment it had pulled itself up and was comfortably perched. If such a first perch is placed in the shade and the young bird is promptly fed, it may keep to it for a long time; but it can move about, and should it drop to the ground, it can mount to safety again.” So, perhaps, the youngster I was watching still had days to go before it was on its own. On the other hand, I returned in subsequent days and never heard or saw another cuckoo.

Later I read that black-billed cuckoos are extremely secretive birds and not much is known about their home life. To have observed as much as I did was a rare privilege. Had I not been resting on Alan’s Bench, I never would have heard and then seen such an unusual sight.

But another November is here and the plaque on the bench–”In Memory of Alan L. Harshberger 1983-2000 The Tim Tyler Family”–reminds me of the fine young boy who will never see another hunting season.

Last December, on an overcast day, I sat on Coyote Bench. Alan’s father Charlie, who was hunting, stopped to talk. A doe I had spotted earlier below the Far Field Road walked up the road toward us as if she were listening to our conversation about Alan. We were remembering Alan’s first doe and his hope that the following fall he would get his first buck. But he never had that chance.

“He will remain forever 17, Charlie,” was all I could think to say.

Sitting on Alan’s Bench later, I heard several shots in the distance. I also heard a raven and crows. But mostly I listened to the whisper of dried grasses as they waved in the breeze.

Finally, it cleared into a blue-skied, cloud-studded day and the sun shone, brightly illuminating Alan’s Knoll. But Alan’s Bench remained in the shadow of the spruce trees.

South for the Winter

Sometime in mid to late August, the first wave of migrating warblers moves through our yard. They come in early morning to feed after flying much of the night. Their appearance signals the passing of the first cold front with a north wind and clear skies that helps them fly more quickly and easily. This push sometimes doubles their speed.

Migrating birds use innate compasses to find their way to both their summer and winter homes. The night migrants have one based on the stars and the day migrants one based on the sun’s position. The immature songbirds going South for the first time not only use their innate knowledge of time and distance, but what they learn on their own during that first flight.

According to scientists who have been studying bird migration for decades, night migrants teach themselves the positions of the stars, particularly that of the unmoving North Star and the spatial relationships among the constellations. They also depend on the patterns of polarized light in the sky at sunrise and sunset to identify true north. In addition to sensing earth’s magnetic field, both day and night migrants may be able to sense the low-frequency sound waves made by the ocean’s surf and trade winds.

Changes in day length signal their internal clock that it is time to begin migration. Night migrants become restless when it is dark, and all migrants start changing their diets by eating foods that help them build up their normal three to five percent body fat to as much as 30 to 50 percent in migratory songbirds. This energy-giving fat allows them to travel as far as 620 miles without eating.

Five billion birds migrate in the Western Hemisphere, heading primarily for the lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America, followed by the West Indies and northern South America. Most small birds are night migrants, traveling singly and flying below 2000 feet at 20 to 30 miles an hour. They take off usually between 30 to 45 minutes after dark and land long before dawn.

Why they migrate at night is not so clear, but researchers theorize that they are better able to feed and build up reserves during the day. Also, the air is calmer and it is cooler at night so the migrants are not as likely to dehydrate.

Day songbird migrants are swallows, swifts, robins, flickers, hummingbirds, and the jay family, although why they prefer to fly during the day is not clear either except that swallows and swifts catch insects on the wing. They start shortly after dawn and reach a peak at 10:00 a.m., flying in flocks instead of individually like the night migrants, but flying at the same speed and height.

Raptors are also day fliers because they rely heavily on soaring flight, which saves them a lot of energy. Clumps of warm, rising air or thermals from mid-morning to mid-afternoon move them along swiftly and sometimes as high as 5000 feet. Shorebirds and waterfowl, which learn migration routes from their parents and the rest of the flock, mostly fly during the day, but they fly as high as 15 to 22 thousand feet at 30 to 50 miles an hour.

There are three kinds of migrants. Complete migrants entirely leave their breeding range and migrate to a separate winter range. Examples include black-throated green warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and chimney swifts. Partial migrants leave only a portion of their breeding range, for instance, song sparrows, robins, and red-tailed hawks. Irruptive migrants are not seasonally or geographically predictable but follow food sources. Good examples in our area are evening grosbeaks, pine siskins, and common redpolls.

There are also three kinds of migration. Most common here is the north/south migrants. Some, though, travel east/west, most notably our tundra swans. And, in the western United States, several species migrate up and down high mountains.

Every autumn I can depend on seeing migrants, but the cast of characters varies. Still, there are some dependable migrants. Black-throated green and yellow-rumped warblers are always our most common warbler species, followed by black-and-white and black-throated blue warblers. Last September I also saw a Wilson’s warbler on September 19 and a Nashville on September 25.

But October is our peak autumn migration month. October 3 brought me both a magnolia and golden-winged warbler as well as red-breasted nuthatches. The following day white-throated sparrows and ruby-crowned kinglets appeared for the first time since the previous April. The first wintering dark-eyed juncos also arrived that day because at the same time our summer visitors are leaving, our winter visitors are replacing them.

By mid October, most of the Neotropical migrants–scarlet tanagers, ovenbirds, wood thrushes, etc.–are gone. Those birds that only migrate to the southern United States–hermit thrushes, yellow-rumped warblers, eastern towhees, eastern phoebes, blue-headed vireos, for instance–stay longer, and every year I record here at least one of those species in early November.

Raptor watching is another highlight of October. Besides using thermals, raptors also use updrafts made by wind that is deflected off ridges. The longer the ridge and the steadier the wind, the farther a raptor can fly with little use of its own energy. Our ridge, part of the Bald Eagle Mountain, which is the westernmost in the ridge-and-valley province, may not rival Hawk Mountain’s migration, but there are days when sitting on top of First Field is rewarding. Mostly, I see dozens of sharp-shinned and red-tailed hawks, along with turkey vultures, but sometimes I am surprised by more spectacular species.

Last October 18 it was windy and clearing after a cold front that had moved in over night. Lying on top of First Field, watching the shapeshifting of kaleidoscopic clouds, I also watched a parade of red-tails and sharpies zipping past high in the sky. Although i was earthbound, I felt as if I had been lifted into another realm of wind and sun and clouds.

Then, suddenly, I spotted a much larger, dark bird sailing past high above me. From below, the only distinguishing marks were the flashing white splotch on each wing and a long white tail rimmed with black. It was an immature golden eagle.

According to the recently-published The Birds of Pennsylvania by McWilliams and Brauning, back on November 6, 1990, 22 golden eagles flew past the Bald Eagle Mountain Fire Tower with is 14 miles northeast of us. Sightings there continue to make our mountain one of the best places to see golden eagles in migration.

Seeing the golden eagle was the highlight of my October migration watching, but November brought its own exciting migrants. On the first of the month, tundra swans called so high in the sky I couldn’t see them. I also put up my bird feeders.

Five days later three pine siskins arrived. I held out hope throughout the month and into December that it would be another irruptive year because a couple pine siskins appeared off and on and even common redpolls once in mid-December. But it was not to be.

On the other hand, winter residents such as tree sparrows, which began arriving on November 9, were in higher numbers than usual. We also had more frequent sightings of purple finches and a wider selection and number of partial migrants that remained here–white-throated and song sparrows, robins by the hundreds, bluebirds, red-tails, and sharp-shinned hawks. The sharpies have been staying north in larger numbers because of the easy prey at bird feeders.

A male kestrel also made infrequent appearances over the winter after arriving in late September to hawk for grasshoppers. Female kestrels migrate three weeks to a month sooner than males and those that winter in Pennsylvania are always males as we discovered.

My best migrant sighting, though, occurred on a clear and breezy November 8. I walked over to Greenbriar Trail in the midst of the eight-year-old recovering clearcut we purchased after the damage was done. It was full of birds scratching among fallen wild grapes–white-throated sparrows and robins by the dozens. Then, in one group, I noticed blackbirds too. They didn’t look like either European starlings or red-winged blackbirds, so I examined them more closely. Ten rusty blackbirds mingled with the others, eating grapes.

These birds, which breed mostly in the boreal woods of Canada and the northern United States, are black with yellow eyes during the breeding season. But they are named for their rusty color change in fall and winter. The females also display a broad, buffy eyebrow and more bronze on their underparts than the males which retain more black and only a faint eyebrow.

I rarely see these birds during migration, but I had no idea that they have shown the greatest population decline of all bird species in the last 100 years. Since they are, after all, only blackbirds, not too much attention had been paid to them until ornithologists Russell Greenberg and Sam Droege, using a variety of bird surveys to assess their population, discovered a 92.8 percent decline in Breeding Bird Surveys from 1966 to 1996, an 89.6 percent decline on Christmas Bird Counts from 1958 to 1988, and a 92.1 percent decline between 1970 and 1995 on the Quebec Checklists Program. They also looked at 84 published state and regional accounts of the birds from pre-1920 to after 1980 as well as other published checklists, regional summaries, and data from the Migration Card Program that ran from the 1880s through the 1940s and found that the decline began in the early part of the twentieth century but increased rapidly in recent decades, particularly the 1970s.

Why rusty blackbirds have declined so precipitously is not clear. That’s because so little is known about their breeding ecology and behavior that ornithologists must learn more about these overlooked birds before drawing any conclusions about their decline. However, they speculate that since rusty blackbirds like wooded wetlands throughout most of the year, the loss and degradation of that habitat may be the answer.

On the other hand, since much of the checklist data was collected in refuges where the habitat is still good, that can’t be the whole answer. Neither can the acidification of their habitat, which may kill their invertebrate wetland prey, or the logging of wetland forests and the construction of large hydroelectric dams that flood boreal forest habitat. No doubt a complex of reasons will emerge if enough research is done on these handsome birds.

Knowing all this, I treasured my sighting of ten rusty blackbirds eating wild grapes on our dry mountaintop. Such discoveries are what make migration-watching my favorite outdoor activity in autumn.