Welcome to Owl My Children, a monthly newsletter where I tell you a bird anecdote and try to understand how wind works.
Greetings from my very chilly apartment, where I’ve just realized I’ve been writing Owl My Children for a whole year! Time flies, as do birds.
Before I tell you about the cool bird thing I witnessed this month, I have a bit of housekeeping to attend to: TinyLetter, the platform where I send my newsletters, is officially being “sunset.” I know from my old Etsy days that this means, “We are ending this service because it doesn’t make us enough money.” TinyLetter is owned by Mailchimp, which I could use for my newsletters, except I’ve decided to be difficult and mainstream and I’m now switching over to Substack. This shouldn’t change anything for you, except you’ll notice that next month’s newsletter might look different. Also, I will only be allowed to include six photos in every newsletter going forward, which, like, how will I choose only six??
Okay, anyway, back to the birds!
Something good about PA
As you may have gathered from my previous newsletters, I’ve been slightly bummed out by the Pennsylvania birding scene, because I can’t help but compare it to Madison. I didn’t realize how good Madison was until I left!
November is the time of year where the disparity between the two places really comes into focus. First, the weird duck scene is SEVERELY lacking here, because we have rivers in Pittsburgh rather than lakes, and rivers are not as conducive to large flocks of birds congregating in a small area and eating duckweed all day. We’re also kind of between two major flyways (the Mississippi flyway and the Atlantic flyway), so we miss out on a lot of migratory birds in general. I’ve previously mentioned the lack of sandhill cranes, which I can’t even talk about without getting sad, and it's rare to see arctic birds like snow buntings or—sigh—northern shrikes. The chances of seeing snowy owls in my county are slim to none. There are also shockingly few migrating sparrows, which stinks, because I just started getting into sparrows last fall and now I’m missing out on the fun challenge of ID-ing them.
Complaints aside, there’s one cool thing I can see in PA that I couldn’t see in Madison: raptor migration.
I thought raptors were dinosaurs?
I did, too, before I was a bird person. I remember my friend telling me in college that she worked at a raptor center and I thought she was working at a museum filled with dinosaur bones. "Raptor," as it turns out, is another word for "bird of prey." This includes hawks, eagles, falcons, and lots of other birds!
There were raptors in Madison, of course, but you can't see them in the thousands the way you can in PA. There’s a magical place in Eastern PA known as Hawk Mountain, which I first read about in Scott Weidensaul’s A World on the Wing. He writes about the first time he witnessed a hawk migration there when he was twelve years old: "Hundreds of raptors glided down the ridge that day, surfing the invisible waves of air, and I stared hungrily through my cheap binoculars..." Hundreds of hawks in one day? Yes! It happens! Hawk Mountain is part of the Kittatinny Ridge, which is known as a “migration superhighway” where tens of thousands of birds pass through each year. Another fun fact about Hawk Mountain is that the environmentalist Rachel Carson (who grew up outside of Pittsburgh, by the way) used bald eagle data collected there to advocate for the elimination of pesticides in her book Silent Spring.
What makes PA so good for raptors? According to the PA Game Commission, it’s all thanks to the Appalachian Mountains:
In Pennsylvania, the mountains rise to moderate elevations, with a high point of 3,213 feet at Mt. Davis in Somerset County. The ridges and long summits like the Allegheny Front form 'leading lines' for raptor migration, concentrating their numbers and giving opportunities for observations.
So, naturally, as soon as I knew I was moving to Pittsburgh I looked up how long it would take me to get to Hawk Mountain. The answer is four-and-a-half hours. (Why is Pennsylvania so gigantic?) I still want to make the trip someday, but I didn't have the bandwidth to try it this year.
I'd given up on Hawk Mountain, but then I went on a bird walk and met a nice lady who told me I needed to go to the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch. I didn’t know this at the time, but there are Hawk Watch sites all over North America (find one near you here!), though not all of them are open to the public. Luckily the Allegheny Front program welcomes anyone and everyone, and it's a mere hour and fifty minutes from my apartment.
Though the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch is not on the Kittatinny Ridge, their unique position on the Allegheny Plateau still yields awesome migration numbers: in September, thousands of broad-winged hawks can be spotted on a single day, and in October, a wide variety of raptors migrate through. And in November they get GOLDEN EAGLES.
This is what it looks like at the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch site! (Photo by me)
I love gold!
Surprise: this newsletter isn’t really about hawks at all! It’s about eagles!
If you know me, you know I love an eagle. Michael and I participated in Madison’s Bald Eagle Nest Watch program for four years. (There’s no such program in Pittsburgh, sadly!) When I heard that I might have the chance to see an EVEN MORE SPECIAL eagle, I knew we had to go to the Allegheny Front and at least give it a try.
Golden eagles are primarily western birds, which means that they’re hard to see east of the Rockies except during migration. They are known to avoid humans, so most often you’ll spot them soaring high above you, looking for a place to go where you can’t bug them. They are named for the golden feathers on the napes of their necks, which are nearly impossible to see when the bird is in flight. But I wouldn't know that, because I had never seen one!
If I saw a golden eagle at the Allegheny Front, it would be a lifer.
However, as I was trying to figure out what day we should go to the Front, I realized something a little nerve-racking: golden eagles are only seen during Hawk Watch on a handful of calendar days. They’re not consistent, and most days in November, in fact, are sadly eagle-free.
What makes the difference? I assumed it was the weather, but I was only half-right: it's the wind.
Comin' in like a western eastern wind
At the Allegheny Front, in order to see high numbers of birds (and therefore golden eagles), there must be a wind with an EASTERN component. A wind from the southeast, for example, is a good wind.
But aren’t the birds moving from the north to the south and east, you ask? Why would they fly AGAINST the wind?
I couldn't figure it out at first, but then I learned that the Allegheny Front location was at the edge of a ridge, with a view facing east. This means that an eastern wind pushes up against the mountain and creates a strong updraft—which raptors catch, bringing them directly above the Hawk Watch spot! There's no western "edge" because it's a plateau, so western winds don't create updrafts. (Fun tidbit: Bob Seger wrote this song about the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch*.)
Each Hawk Watch location is different. So if you’re planning to visit a Hawk Watch, look up their data ahead of time and learn what direction the wind needs to be blowing on your visit. Michael and I were able to use this website that lists the wind conditions along with the weather. Though the first two weeks of November presented only western winds, we found a nice Sunday that promised a wind with an eastern component. So we packed our lunch and headed east, our fingers crossed.
Watching hawks watching us
We parked on top of the ridge on a clear, sunny November day, and as we walked over to join the group of binocular-wielding strangers, we heard a call: “Bird!”
I looked up, and flying directly overhead, so close that I almost didn’t need the binoculars, was a golden eagle. Huge and brown, white patches underneath the wings. Soaring without needing to flap.
“Well, that was easy,” Michael said. We had been there for less than one minute.
A GOLDEN EAGLE! Notice the all-brown chest and head and the white wing patch. (Photo by Michael)
We signed our names in the guest book and settled in on a bench amongst the other hawk watchers. People with scopes were set up near the drop-off, and a crowd of regulars gathered around a picnic table, pouring wine into plastic cups. (It was eleven AM.) A solo photographer who didn't know much about birds immediately latched onto me and Michael, lamenting the fact that all the hawks were “too far away” and telling us about the olde-timey car shows he liked to photograph. But the other birders were calling out more hawks in the distance, and I snubbed the poor man, eagerly raising my binoculars and forgoing any attempts to make polite conversation.
We stayed for about two and a half hours, which were ice-cold but delightful; we saw enough raptors that there wasn’t a lot of time for idle chit-chat. The most frequent visitor to the ridge were ravens, who weren’t migrating at all but who saw it as their noble duty to chase each and every raptor that passed through. The veteran hawk watchers seemed to hate the ravens, but I thought they were entertaining, and they reminded me of my cat Otis, who is also a pest.
Raven-Otis. (Photo by Michael)
There were more red-tailed hawks than I could keep track of, and each time they flew by, they seemed like they were staring right at us. They, too, reminded me of my cats, because they were curious and a little too bold. When I got home and looked at the photos Michael took, I saw that the red-tailed hawks really were watching us; they're making intense eye contact in every single photo. Maybe when they got home they entered us into their own Human Watch database.
A red-tailed hawk looking at us. (Photo by Michael)
During our time on the mountain we also saw several red-shouldered hawks, a sharp-shinned hawk, a few bald eagles, and seven more golden eagles, bringing our total to EIGHT golden eagles for the day. (They saw even more after we left!) And all the birds were moving north to south, buoyed by the current coming from the east.
The veteran hawk watchers were experts at identifying these birds from a distance—I’d see a speck in the sky and these people would instantly know whether it was red-shouldered hawk or red-tailed, whether it was an immature bald eagle or an immature golden. I got better at recognizing the key features as the day went on, but still, it was a humbling experience! We left feeling amazed at what the hawk watchers could do, and also amazed that there were so many people at the Front that day. There were nearly 40 fellow hawk watchers with us on the mountain. All strangers, all nerds. It was nice.
If you’re curious to see the full count for the day we visited, you can find that data here!
Two happy hawk watchers. (Selfie by me!)
Hope everyone has a lovely holiday season. If you're looking for more bird stuff to do, the national Christmas Bird Count is coming up! It's a great way to meet local birders and learn more about the birds in your area.
Keep it breezy,
Holly
*I’m kidding. Bob Seger did not do this. But isn’t it a good Hawk Watch anthem? Other possible anthems include High School Musical's "Breaking Free," Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle," Harry Styles's "Golden," Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly," and "Free Bird," I guess.