There is nothing like a gray day to set one’s mind on a contemplative path and the first week of the hawk count certainly provided me with a string of them. Luckily for me, a watcher of the skies, my only limits were the clouds. Even so, my imagination takes me far beyond and if someone accused me of having my head in the clouds, well, they wouldn’t be wrong. Unfavorable winds, unrelenting leaden skies, along with periods of snow and icy rain brought migration to a standstill last week. The days passed without a single sighting of a raptor in flight, and as time crept by, I felt more and more like a hermit in a cave on some forgotten mountain top. So in quiet repose, as the local hawk shack hermit, I eagerly awaited my first Pilgrim.
That Pilgrim would come in the form of volunteer hawk counter, Matthew Winkler, a great birder with an eye for the skies. Matthew could not have timed his arrival better. After a day of driving wind and snow, the clouds finally parted and the sun peaked through for the first time in almost a full week. On Saturday morning we climbed the stairs into clear blue skies and we began scanning the horizon. For those of you who know a little bit about hawk migration, you will know that days start slow. Raptors rely on warm air currents to help them along during their migration and it takes time for the sun to heat the air. Generally speaking, hawks do not move early in the day. At 10 a.m. I off-handedly made a bold prediction. I said, “At this moment, somewhere south of us, a Golden Eagle is lifting off. He will be here at two o’clock.”
As the day warmed we began seeing a small number of Bald Eagles rising on thermals and counted them as they moved north, we would end the day with eight in total. But the highlight of the day would come as we watched a young Bald Eagle that had committed itself to riding a thermal high into the atmosphere suddenly abandon its efforts to dive down and meet another eagle. It was an adult Golden! First of the year. Eventually, both birds passed overhead and continued northeast over the lake. I looked at my watch…. and it read 1:58 p.m.!
How did I obtain this prophet-like power you ask? Well, that’s a secret that the Hermit of the Hawk Shack will keep to himself. But you are welcome to make the pilgrimage to Whitefish Point and seek out the advice of a Guru, not from the Hermit, but from skies the color of gun steel and frigid wind that sticks in your bones for hours after you have entered the warmth of your home. It’s the hard days that make the bright days beautiful, and it’s in the bleak place where the garden of gratitude grows.
The weekend was sunny and glorious. Sunday brought more Bald Eagles, another Golden, and two Northern Goshawks. It also brought me a new friend in Matthew, who gave me a much needed day off. But now it is Monday, the clouds are back and my head is somewhere up there with them and that’s where it will happily remain all week long. Until next week, don’t forget to look up!
