The hawks of autumn have arrived on our land and all of the farms and forest that surround us. High above us one can see slow moving kettles of vultures, sharp-shinned hawks, broad-winged hawks even the odd eagle moving past us for some distant place.
Coopers Hawk, Photo by Kevin CarlsonThis land calls to all of these birds but especially those in need. In the afternoon, when the migration has petered out to a few stranglers, kestrels dot the phone wires looking for the movement of migrating dragonflies in the fertile grasslands, sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks look for migrant songbirds as they dart through the woods like phantoms, appearing and disappearing in a second. Eagles preside over the tidal waterways looking as though they haven’t a care in the world, while harriers fly constantly over the marshes hoping to surprise an unwary bird or mammal. You can’t sit and watch passing raptors in the woods and field of Greenwich, better to go to Cape May for that. This is a place where one can watch a raptor make a living, a Cooper’s hawk darting through a wooded hedge row, bearing down on a hapless sparrow or blackbird, or two eagles in a territorial dispute or winging silently down to the water to scoop up a fish reckless enough to swim near the surface.
I drove around these early autumn fields hoping to see hawks. Our first northwest front moved into area and the following winds always bring hawks to the Delaware Bay shore. This is the engine that makes Cape May an internationally important and famous stopover for hawks and many other species. I studied the Cape hawk migration for my doctoral work by attaching radio transmitters to sharp-shinned hawks. Although brief affairs, I came to know many sharp-shinned hawks personally.
Small raptors — sharp-shinned hawk, Cooper’s hawk and kestrels — make up the bulk of the migration, simply because they make up the bulk of raptors. But their numbers are often inflated by the hawk counters because many of these birds of prey stay for days along the bayshore waiting for good weather to cross or to build up a small fat reserve before they move on south. One bird in our study stayed on the upper Cape near Dennisville for about 5 days, each day flying down to the point hoping to cross Delaware Bay only to be stymied by high winds or poor visibility. They’re no fools. Why risk a dangerous crossing at the mouth of the Delaware Bay when you can chow down on the one of the densest populations of prey that also happen to be in migration?
When the wind blows more than 15 or 20 knots from the Northwest or west, as becomes increasingly frequent as the fall wear on, raptors will start flying up-bay in search of a narrower crossing. This brings them to our home near the Cohansey River.
Much of this area of the bayshore is farmland that extends out to the bay marshes, but it is laced with old wetland forests that ultimately drain into the bay. The farmland is a mix of active farms and land managed with a plan developed by the Nature Conservancy. This land brims with life at all times, but in the fall it overflows. In the morning exhausted passerines find a cornucopia of fruits and insects to devour to get ready for the next night’s flight. They join dense and diverse flocks — especially species that spring forth from the natural abundance of farmland — blackbirds, doves and yes starlings and cowbirds. Then in the afternoon, hungry and exhausted, migrant hawks (many of them bird eaters) fall to the land from high sky or stopover after a long exhausting flight from the windswept Cape. They have one thing in common, all are in search of food and cover to rest and roost. Fortunately for them, the people of this land offer a benevolent and welcome hand.
