Many people visiting the hawk deck ask, “How do you keep count of the raptors flying by?” These days, my answer is, “On one hand.” Alright, I may have had one day where I needed two hands and another day on which I needed more than two, but otherwise, one hand has been more than enough.
That being said, there will be many days to come where, even if I added in both of my feet, I still wouldn’t have enough digits to keep track. So, this year I am leaving the clickers behind, and I am trying something new, an app called Counter UX. With Counter UX, I can add as many custom categories as I like, so I will no longer have to worry about not having enough clickers for all the species I record. I am pretty excited about trying this out, but it might have to wait a few weeks until it becomes necessary.
An arctic blast has been blowing steadily from the north for the past few days, keeping temperatures in the negative column. Snow has been falling sideways here at Whitefish Point, and while I stand in the cold, my fingers and toes are being bitten with an unrelenting stinging numbness. With nothing but the pain to focus on, my otherwise unoccupied brain wonders if I did have to use my frozen fingers to count, would I even be able to?
I also think about March Madness and how it has nothing to do with basketball. March madness is what happens to raptor counters after staring into a sky full of nothing all day! Then seven and half hours into my vigil, a fourth-year Bald Eagle flies overhead, and everything changes. For that moment, the pain in my extremities is forgotten, and the day itself seems shorter, almost as if a reset button has been pushed. I take in the sight of the magnificent raptor, and I realize this is not madness at all; this is migration. Some days are diamonds, and some days are rocks. Most days in March are rocks, and the Big Lake hurls those rocks at you in the form of ice-cold north winds, blinding snow, and bleak oppressive skies. If one is lucky, a little diamond dust is sprinkled on your day as something as simple as a bird leaves you with hope for brighter, warmer days to come.
~ Rich Couse
2022 Spring Raptor Counter
Featured photo: Bald Eagle. Photo by Rich Couse
