The Kellogg Columns

Most of us know about the endangered whooping crane and its precarious recovery from near extinction. You can most easily see these white cranes at the Aransas refuge in Texas, where the 150 wild migratory birds that are left spend the winter. It was a surprise to learn that nearly half as many of these magnificent birds are present in central Florida on the Kissimee Prairie.

A local reader and her friend in Florida have provided an article telling of a ten-year project to establish a permanent population of whoopers there. A four-year old pair recently produced two eggs, the first laid in the wild in the United States in 60 years. A new project will begin soon to establish a migratory population of whooping cranes that will leave Florida in the summer to nest in Canada.

Here in New England we very rarely see the only other North American crane, the sandhill crane. This smaller, brown crane is still an abundant bird of the American prairies with a non-migratory population also in Florida. Some someday I hope to hear the bugling cries of many thousands of these cranes rising from the Platte River of Nebraska.

We do have some close cousins of the cranes, the herons and egrets. The largest of these is the great blue heron, which a friend of mine likes to call the "dreaded blue crane." As tall as a man, it is a startling sight, either when standing still in a small stream or puddle, or when in ponderous flight, the great wings slowly beating, like an ancient pterodactyl, a flying contemporary of the dinosaurs.

Some scientists believe that birds are descended from the theocodonts, a group of reptiles that were ancestors to the dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Others believe that birds are descended directly from the coelosaurs, a group of small agile predatory dinosaurs that were very like ostriches.

The herons, cranes, and egrets are an old family, having evolved earlier than most other bird species. The great blue heron certainly gives the impression that it is prehistoric, an emissary from the distant past.

Now is the most likely time that you might run across the great blue heron, for the birds that nest in colonies in the beaver swamps of Massachusetts have dispersed, and are now present almost everywhere. They hunt in the shallow edges of ponds and rivers large or small, or even ditches on the side of highways.

They are prone to fly some distance to a night roost in early evening, so watch the sky if you are relaxing on your deck after dinner. The huge, beating wings are a giveaway, the long legs stretched out behind and the head long and thick, since it is doubled back on itself.

If you want to see this heron close up, drive along Pondside Road in Longmeadow. Stop where the trees open up and scan the marshes. Besides the many ducks and teal there, you will see a stately heron or two. They often perch on a wood duck box or dead tree, but often they are in the shallow water hunting for fish.

When hunting they stand sentinel like, their long necks tilted slightly forward, the heavy long dagger of a bill poised for the strike. Suddenly the neck swings down and strikes the water. Then the head returns erect and triumphant, the fish struggling to escape from the open bill. The heron then juggles it around until the head is first, then swallows it whole in one or a few gulps.

After a meal the heron holds its head tall and proud, looking much like ET, ready to phone home. It can remain perfectly still for many minutes, occasionally turning the massive head on the slim neck so quickly that you have to blink in amazement.

The bird will seem so intent that you might imagine it is listening to some message from its ancestors or descendants. Is this tall, two-legged creature in touch with our past or our future? The bold black and yellow eye can mesmerize us, hinting at secrets we will never know. Put aside the mystery and enjoy the wonder of the truly great blue heron.

This column celebrates its first anniversary today. As if to commemorate the event, Helen Bates called a few days ago to give me a report of a person in Westfield seeing a sandhill crane flying over. By chance last week's column was about cranes and herons. The sandhill crane is very rare in new England, its range extending only to Michigan. If the bird was a sandhill, what could have brought it here?

The title of this column begins to answer that question. Birds are creatures of the air, and their travels are dependent on conditions of the envelope of air that enwraps the earth. In late summer and fall the weather channel shows some startling satellite imagery from orbit. Cameras track the movement of clouds and storms over land and sea with amazing clarity and beauty.

The pictures bring to mind the fragility of life caught in such violence. Birds might seem the most fragile of all, except that their powers of flight have evolved to handle most of the vagaries of wind and rain. The hurricanes that just raked the east coast did displace many birds, but they are amazingly resourceful and recover quickly.

That sandhill crane might have been a storm blown bird from the central prairies of Florida. Most birders in New England who long for a view of unusual birds from the far south are out in the field the minute a hurricane passes through. The latest storm went right up the Connecticut Valley, so we were anticipating exotic visitors when dawn came and the eye was right over us.

It was not to be, as the only report was of a common tern and two black terns from Turner's Falls. Though marvelous flyers, most terns are light-bodied and prone to be buffeted and borne off course by high winds. These birds were caught up from the coast of New Jersey or Long Island and deposited on our river. When the wind turned to the northwest, they quickly rode them back to the ocean.

To find the tropical birds we were hoping for, one had to be on Cape Cod that morning. The cyclonic winds that revolve around the center carry birds ahead of the storm to the east and south against the shore. Many end up in Cape Cod Bay, pushed right onto the bay beaches and unable to fight the wind around the curve of the outer cape.

When the storm passes and the wind switches to the northwest, they are pushed into the crook of the Cape's arm at Eastham. With clearing skies, you can stand at First Encounter Beach and watch the ocean birds fly past very closely.

After this hurricane, watchers there observed all the regular seabirds that live off our New England shore, but they also found a few sooty terns and a bridled tern. The sooty tern is a worldwide tropical species that nests on islands in the Gulf of Mexico. The very similar bridled tern nests on islands of the West Indies and Bahamas as well as in the Caribbean. Both have much darker backs than the regular coastal terns of New England.

If you take a boat trip out from Key West Florida in the early spring, you can find bridled terns coursing the open sea in their relentless quest for food, which they pluck from the surface of the ocean. Arriving at a small group of islands to the west of Key West, called the Dry Tortugas, you will find an immense nesting colony of sooty terns.

Both these terns live in tropical waters around the globe, the bridled tern staying closer to land masses. The sooty tern ranges far over the open oceans. Atlantic populations disperse eastward after the breeding season, many spending the winter off the African coast. It is thought to be one of the most numerous birds in the world.

Two sooty terns were found on the Connecticut River after Hurricane David in 1979. Every time another storm comes up the coast and weakens over New England, local birders hold their breath and hope to find one. For most of us our first encounter with these tern travelers from the tropics is still to come.

We drove up into the eastern hills, far from the river valley. Here, many years ago, the state had bought an entire region, with towns and roads and farms. Two huge dams had been thrown across the Swift River and a reservoir was born. Now the old roads through the region are closed and gated. Forests have reclaimed the surrounding land and created something close to a wilderness, the Quabbin Reservation.

The gates keep out motorized vehicles, but hikers are welcome, and, on certain old roads, bicycles too. Before we even unloaded our bikes for a ride, there were birds in the trees overhead. The Quabbin is full of planted pines so the most prominent birds are those that favor these evergreens.

Though it was fall, the pine warblers were singing. Their song was a steady trill of notes, lazy and musical, unlike the harder, faster notes of the chipping sparrow. They came into view, the most typical of the warblers, a dull yellow with a greenish back and white bars on the wings. These pine warblers nested here and had not yet begun their migration. They are one of a handful of hardy warbler species that remain on their nesting grounds until late fall, then migrate only to the southeastern US.

We had to crane our heads to see them above us. With them were magnolia, parula, and black-throated green warblers. These birds were silent, for they had little energy to spare, having just arrived here from their own wilderness breeding areas in eastern Canada. They had flown all night and were stocking up for the next night's journey on the way to the tropics.

Also present all summer was a species that we heard throughout the entire morning, the red-breasted nuthatch. Most of us are familiar with the white breasted nuthatch that comes to almost every feeding station. Sometimes a "baby" nuthatch will appear, much smaller, with a breast washed red. Some of you have written to ask me about this bird, wondering if it is common here in New England.

It is fairly common here, but because it likes those evergreens so much, it is mostly restricted to the hilly areas where these trees are found. It is an abundant bird in the forests to our north where spruce and fir predominate. It shares the unique upside down feeding behavior of its larger cousin, but is more prone to poke its bill into the twigs and leaves at the ends of branches.

It also has that distinctive voice, a nasal yank, yank, yank, repeated often and loudly. It is higher pitched and faster than the call of the white-breasted nuthatch, but identifiable from a long distance. Everywhere we stopped our bikes, at least one or two called somewhere nearby. They travel in small flocks and are fond of conversing as they work their way through the trees.

They also are easily attracted to a pishing noise, and will come close to see why these odd human creatures are raising an alarm. Then their own calls will be almost frantic, interspersed with chips and chatters as they confront the giant invader of their domain.

During the morning we heard or saw many of these little birds, too many for even such a favored habitat as this. Perhaps this indicates an invasion of these birds for the coming winter. The last such invasion occurred in the winter of 1993-94, when ten times the normal numbers were found on counts.

Unlike its cousin, the red-breasted nuthatch is migratory. If there is a poor cone crop in the vast northern forests, then these birds take the cue early in August and start to move farther south. There they join our local populations, and, if our trees have produced a crop, they stay for the winter. If not, then many of our birds will join the trek as it continues farther south along the Appalachian hills.

If it is an invasion year, you are much more likely to discover this spry little visitor at your feeder. They like suet as well as sunflower seed, but seem shyer, and quicker to startle and flee. They have the same blue back, but a black mustache sets off a prominent white strip through the eye, and their breast is washed with varying shades of red. Watch for them.

The master magician has crossed my path lately, and raised the hair on my neck each time. The first time was after a walk in the Stebbins Refuge with other members of the Allen Bird Club. Some of us had continued the outing with a stop at the sandbar on the river. Two plump plovers were there, the ones with the strange first name of semipalmated.

Suddenly they rose from the mud, calling their sweet chewee, and the magician appeared from nowhere. He was dark and menacing in his black coat, and he sped straight for one of the plovers, which twisted and turned in desperate flight. They rose high in the air over the river, careening back and forth before us. Suddenly the magician broke off pursuit. He was only showing off, reminding the plover of who was the master.

You know about the peregrine falcon, the large and spectacular hunter of the skies. A single pair has been nesting in downtown Springfield for a number of years. I wrote this spring about the truly American falcon, the kestrel, a small hawk that nests in cavities around grassy fields. There is a third member of this elite group of falcons, slightly larger than the kestrel, but much smaller than the peregrine. This is the merlin, the magician.

On the Canadian tundra and prairies, where the merlin nests, it perches in treetops or on poles, waiting for a meal to appear. Small birds of the open country are its specialty, which it pursues, easily overtaking them with a burst of speed. The smaller male does most of the hunting at this time, bringing food to the incubating female, sitting on an old crow's nest or in a large tree cavity.

When we see them here in New England they are more magical, appearing almost from nowhere and swiftly disappearing into the distance. They seem to like to fly low over the ground, and are powerful enough to cut through the wind with ease. They prefer the coasts, much at home over the surf and beach, where they toy with ocean breezes and sandpipers alike.

A hawkwatch site on the south cost of Long Island counts the most merlins in this area, but a few fly past the watch site in Granville, called Blueberry Hill. I was there the other day when one came by, swift and straight over the treeless hilltop, now here, now gone in the blink of an eye. One of my companions called it a nuclear-powered pigeon, and oddly enough, the merlin once sported the name pigeon hawk. Fission would also be an appropriate energy source for such a mysterious creature.

As powerful as the merlin is, it is also something of an acrobat. My third recent encounter was at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, Connecticut. There a passing merlin put on a different kind of show for a large group of viewers. The watchers stand on an open meadow knoll in the state park, and the hawks fly low, heading off the point and across the harbor mouth.

A steady stream of sharp-shinned hawks and ospreys coursed past. The small sharpshins were flapping and gliding into a westerly wind. The stately ospreys were gliding and circling with seeming disdain of the elements. The merlins usually bullet by with nary a pause. However, the one we saw put on a show before moving on.

It settled into the air currents just ahead, over the eastern marsh, but not hovering like a kestrel with frantically flapping wings. It simply spread its larger pinions and hung there. Its head was bowed, as if greeting the human audience. No, it was reaching down to its large feet, which held a dragonfly. The large insect was devoured in two or three bites. Then the merlin slipped to the side and secured another such morsel, repeating the magic act of eating in mid-air, with never a beat.

After a third tidbit, it left the marsh and flicked its wings. It was over us in a second and then gone. Was it ever there at all, this magician of the air?

We called him Jorge (hor-hay), his given name, but his friends call him Yook, because he comes from the Yucatan region of Mexico. He is a true pioneer, being one of a small handful of bird naturalists in the Mexican state of Veracruz. He is a tour leader for the fledgling Audubon society of Mexico, Pronatura. Twelve of us from the Connecticut River Valley were his charges on an eight-day tour of central Veracruz.

How does a young person become interested in the vast bird life that surrounds us all the time? In the United States, bird watching is one of the fastest growing recreational activities, and young people have more and more models and encouragement to pursue this and other forms of nature study.

The Massachusetts Audubon Society is nearly one hundred years old, but in Mexico such organizations for education and advocacy are just being created. When asked who he birds with in the field, Jorge answers that there is no one. His friend and colleague, Ernesto, is too busy organizing and publicizing the Veracruz chapter of Pronatura.

Ernesto is slim, erect, and handsome, with a flashing animated smile and bright eyes. He speaks quickly in almost fluent English. Jorge speaks softly and slowly, often searching for words, and is more easy-going with a sleepy eyed, slope shouldered look. He would not think of parting with his long wavy black mane of hair. He reminds me of Joe Namath, and in fact is an excellent athlete, having turned down a scholarship to play baseball at Penn State.

Instead he took offers to intern as a bird researcher at various places in the United States. There he honed his skills and increased his knowledge, and now he leads birding tourists around his home state of Veracruz. Much of the budget of Pronatura is provided by such tours, and the publicity has supplied a steady flow of young people from the United States to help in research projects.

In recent years many birders from the United States have been enticed south to enjoy the hottest recreational activity there is, tropical birding. Favorite destinations are Trinidad, Costa Rica, Belize, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia. There the birder is immersed in a world of hundreds of new species to observe and learn, many so colorful and exotic that they astound the senses.

My decision to resist these well-known destinations and choose Veracruz as my first taste of tropical birding was a good one. There, many of the birds are familiar, migrants who breed in North America and return to Central America by October to spend our winter in warmth, with habitat and food in relative abundance.

Jorge knows all these species and he also leads us to some of the tropical endemics that are permanent residents of central Veracruz. He is still finding new species that were not known to be present in this region. One on this trip was the rufous-browed wren, which we spotted on the floor of a mountain pine forest. "Nobody will believe us," Jorge whispered.

We found nearly seventy species not recorded anywhere in the United States. It is hard to pick a favorite. Perhaps it was the huge flock of white-crowned parrots swarming around the trees on the cliffs near the famous waterfall featured in the film, Romancing the Stone. Perhaps it was the blue-crowned motmot in the mountain top park in the middle of the city of Xalapa (ha-la-pa). Perhaps it was the black-headed trogon sitting on a low branch beside the crocodile pond at the La Mancha research station. Perhaps it was the lineated woodpecker spotted in the top of a tree from the roof of the hotel in Cardel.

This roof-top setting is one of the places where the daytime migration of some of our North American birds is observed. Here millions of hawks and vultures fly past each spring and fall as well as many thousands of storks, pelicans, and flycatchers. More about this amazing migration spectacle, called the River of Raptors (Rio de Rapaces) next week.

In the meantime, to support Pronatura, become a friend of the River of Raptors by sending a tax-deductible donation to THE VERACRUZ PROJECT, PO Box 73, Kempton PA 19529.

Last week I wrote about finding seventy new exotic species in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. As exciting as it was, this was not the primary reason for finally deciding to travel to the tropics. I went to see the migration and winter home of the birds of the New England summer. They were there in amazing abundance, the flycatchers, swallows, thrushes, vireos, warblers, tanagers and orioles. We observed more than two hundred familiar species that migrate to and from the tropics. Most of them migrate at night, but we can see some during the day, in the act, if you will.

On the first day of the tour, the sky was overcast and rain threatened. Overhead the sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks were migrating. They glided low over the treetops, flapping briefly, then gliding in the same pattern they use everywhere, including New England.

When the weather cleared a bit on the third day, the migrants we were hoping for began to move past the hotel roof in Cardel. The broad-winged hawks streamed over in flocks of several hundred. They had left their breeding grounds in the forest of the Northeast a month earlier, soaring and gliding their way south and west, aiming for the Texas coast. These may have been the same birds we saw in Hampden County three weeks earlier.

As they move down over the coastal plain into Mexico, they suddenly encounter a spur of the high mountains of the Sierra Madre, blocking their path almost to the very edge of the Gulf of Mexico. They do not migrate over water, so they squeeze through the narrow gap between mountain and sea, making this part of Veracruz the ideal place to observe and count the river of raptors.

There are three official counters at each of the two observation sites, all with a battery of clickers, scanning the sky and making the best estimates they can. We stood with them and beheld the spectacle of daylight migration. Swainson's hawks and broad-winged hawks are the most abundant, numbering in the hundreds of thousands over a three-week season of flight. They are trying to monitor the entire population of these species.

On the Sunday our tour arrived in Mexico, they had counted 400,000 broad-winged hawks at the two sites, eight miles apart. We were hoping there were some left for us to see. We did have one good flight the day before we left Mexico, witnessing some boiling masses numbering over 30,000 birds. Besides the hawks, there were huge flocks of turkey vultures, wood storks, white pelicans, and anhingas.

Despite my love of hawks, my favorite spectacle was the migration of two species of songbirds which breed in the Great Plains of the United States. Both of these species are rare but regular visitors to New England. One is the dickcissel, and when we heard their calls high overhead, we looked up to see enormous undulating masses of thousands of these small birds, compacted closely and moving as one on their way south.

The other songbird is the scissor-tailed flycatcher. Now this is a spectacular bird, with a pair of foot long tail feathers. It uses them to perform amazing acrobatic maneuvers, usually, but not always, for courtship display. Anyone would fall in love with this showy bird. They roost and migrate in loose flocks, flying low or perching in the open on wires and fences.

On our last day a scissor-tail flycatcher was sitting on the ground in the middle of a field. Its tail and wings were spread on the grass, showing off the subtle, salmon pink sides and underbelly. The pale gray head shown in the sunlight and the bird would suddenly spring from the ground and somersault into the air, catching grasshoppers in mid-flight with ease. Then the rich underwing color would flash brightly and dazzle the eyes.

It was a fitting end to an unforgettable trip. The migration of birds links the Americas in an indissoluble bond, and it reminds us that the human cultures of the Americas must be united as well.

To support the work of Pronatura, become a friend of the River of Raptors by sending a tax-deductible donation to THE VERACRUZ PROJECT, PO Box 73, Kempton PA 19529.

Most of the time we watch our feeding stations from the warmth and comfort of the kitchen or den. If you have more than one station, you can watch from any of several places, and then the binoculars are always in another room when you want to get a closer look at what is out there.

If you are content with just hanging a feeder or two close to a window, then a closer look is often not needed. You may be missing something special, however. Most people seem to want to attract a variety of birds to their yards, and especially some glamour species, such as cardinals or a red-bellied woodpecker.

The chickadees, goldfinches, and jays are great, but the heart of a feeding program has to be the sparrows. Not the misnamed house sparrow, which we should more properly call by its family name. It is one of the Eurasian weaver finches. The house sparrow is abundant on active farms and in the older suburbs near the center of towns and cities. The more rural areas without farms are fortunate enough not to entertain these pests.

True sparrows are a native family of ground feeding birds, all sharing brown or gray coloration and all fond of eating seeds, which they find on or near the ground. They, along with blackbirds and finches are the pinnacle of bird evolution. Well, perhaps not the pinnacle, but at least the most recently evolved group of species. They are adapted to inhabit the more open, arid, or colder regions of the earth, able to derive sustenance from vegetable matter as well as insect life.

If you spread seed on the ground every day you will attract sparrows. Use a mix with plenty of millet included, or even only millet. An extra treat is to go outside in the evening and sit among the sparrows. Not only will you see them closely, you will overhear their conversations.

Two weeks ago there were only a few song sparrows at the feeders. Now the autumn has arrived, bringing sparrows from the North driven by cold winds to our door. First the white-throated sparrows appeared, sporting the white or pale gray stripes over the eye as well as the white throat. The immatures are duller and show off streaking on the breast and sides. Often you can hear one of them sing their lazy plaintive song, one slow clear note followed by several higher slow, sweet notes.

Within a week the juncos came to the feeders, overwhelming the ground and nearby bushes. The more of any one species there is in your yard, the more they will talk with each other. The odd swamp or fox sparrow that comes will not deign to speak to the juncos. Even the two or three white-crowned sparrows will be silent. These last are usually immature birds, with plain undersides and two dark stripes through the crown surrounding a buffy central patch.

All the sparrows come to the feeders in desperate frenzy as the sun sets. Sit outside and keep very still, behind the cover of a fence or otherwise camouflaged. If there are more than a few song sparrows they will talk to one another, giving out a short jumble of notes as they supplant one another at a favored spot, or hurry for cover in a nearby bush.

But the best conversation of all is the juncos. A single note, low and mellow but clear as a tinkling bell, repeated two or three times, or many times to make a slow sweet trill. This song sounds too insistent to be just exuberance or fun. They are sorting out who has first rights and who follows who at the station.

As only a few arrive, there is much chasing and fleeing. As more and more sneak onto the seed ground, they tolerate one another within a few inches. Then the spectacle of an entire regiment of juncos fills the space, each bowing their pale pink bill to the ground, like recruits on parade.

As the light fades they may be harder to see, but you can feel them all around you, taking the last bit of meal before bed. The serenade subsides and one by one they flutter off, seeking the shelter of a thick bush for the long night.

The dark gypsy has come to town, one of the species partial to thistle seed. The dark gypsy is the pine siskin, a close cousin of our familiar goldfinch. They are the same size, share the same flocking habits, and the same food preference. As befits its name, the pine siskin favors the seeds of coniferous trees, while the goldfinch dines on the deciduous varieties, especially birches.

The thistle or niger seed you buy to entice these little finches is from a plant native to India. The pine siskin is a notorious gypsy wanderer, but it is a native North American. Like most of the finch family species, it is abundant in the spruce-fir forests of Canada. This huge belt of forest extends south into northern New York and northern New England.

Some winters the pine siskin does not even bother leaving it breeding forests, since the seed crop is abundant enough to last the entire winter. However, in some years the evergreen trees do not produce a cone crop, and the birds must wander to find food. Unlike most migrant species, finches do not have a warm weather destination, where insects flourish.

The goldfinch also wanders a lot, but some are always remain around every winter. It consumes weed seeds as well as tree seeds, and there is always something around for the goldfinch to eat in the wild. Whether a bird is present at your feeders depends much more on the availability of wild food nearby then on what you may supply. Feeders only supplement the diet of most species.

All summer my feeders hosted several dozen goldfinch. Then in September the numbers dropped to a handful. Now they are back to about 20 birds. The news of pine siskins arriving in our area was on the hot lines for a week or two before they appeared at my own feeders.

First there was only one, a heavily streaked bird clinging to the thistle bag with the goldfinches. The back and wings are very dark, with even darker streaking and a yellow wing patch or stripe. The undersides are white with dark streaking on the chest and sides. When they spread their wings, as they often do when squabbling at the feeder, the yellow patch shows up clearly though the entire length of the wing.

In a few days I counted a dozen siskins crowding out the goldfinches. The pine siskin seems to be dominant over the goldfinch in any feeding situation. The following day they were entirely absent, as they have been for over a week now. It may be that our local pine trees have not produced a crop either this fall, so the pine siskin may be moving on to more fertile forests.

In some years they have been found in large numbers as far south as the Carolinas and Georgia. The last big winter in southern New England was 1990, when thousands were present in flocks of up to 150 birds. Since then there have been mini invasions almost every other year. In the winter of 1998-99 very few siskins were found anywhere in southern New England.

The word siskin derives from various Scandinavian and Russian words, which all mean to chirp, or a small chirping bird. The pine siskin does have a tendency to chatter and chirp, as do all social species that flock together. Its common calls are delicate like the bird itself, but it also makes a unique sound, a drawn out wheeeiirrr, rising in pitch.

Siskins and goldfinches eat sunflower as well as thistle, but you must always take care to discourage the squirrels from sunflower feeders. The best way is to string a long wire across the yard and hang feeders from that, high enough from the ground and distant enough from overhanging branches.

If siskins come, they may come in droves, crowding out goldfinches and chickadees. Unlike the chickadees, they are not averse to alighting on the ground and eating. There is nothing like the sight of dozens of siskins camped on the ground under the feeders, suddenly rushing away in a noisy cloud if spooked by a potential predator. I hope the dark gypsy returns to stay.

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Its sculptured image adorns our coins and flagpoles and it appears on countless other logos we encounter every day. We see it so much that the picture of the bald eagle fades into the background of our minds. Yet its potency is not lost, only dormant. When a stranger learns you study birds, the instant question is, "Do you ever see eagles?"

Thirty years ago the answer might have been uncertain, for the glimpse of a distant migrating eagle was a rare treat for the most avid of watchers. Here in the East, bald eagles only nested on the wild rivers and shores of Maine and the Maritimes. Now many questioners have already seen an eagle themselves, for there are five breeding pairs on the lower Connecticut River and eleven active nests in the state.

Many more are migrating through our area as well. At the hawk watch site in West Granville, Tom Swochak and John Weeks of Westfield have been monitoring the passage of migrating hawks and songbirds nearly every day since September 1. They started out wilting under the late summer sun, and now they brave the biting winds of early winter. It was thirty years ago when we discovered this beautiful site, a bare ledge outcrop where wild blueberries grow with a commanding view in all directions.

There was a time when we would rejoice when a bald eagle came by once or twice a year. Now the watchers have to be careful they don't include the "local resident eagles" with their count of migrating birds. Tom explains to me that they have a pair of adults and one sub-adult that regularly soar up above the Cobble Mt. Reservoir or cruise to or from it on short hops.

We have to follow the path of every eagle, waiting for it to circle high into the sky and then glide off to the distant southwest, on its way to a winter home on the Chesapeake Bay perhaps. There many eagles will find open water and the fish they need to survive until spring.

There were several of us on the mountain recently, enjoying too few hawks moving past. A red-tailed hawk would appear near the northeast horizon, circling to gain height, drifted back by the stiff southwest breeze. When high enough, the bird would glide directly into the wind, riding it as far as it could until it skirted the treetops. With a such head wind they take many minutes to move by, but we have to follow each one to be sure it is migrating.

Occasionally a harrier would course by, but there are never many of this threatened marshland species, now almost as rare as the bald eagle once was. The sharp-shinned flight was dwindling down to a few, with the season total over 1000 birds. It was too few for this now-declining species, which hunts the dwindling numbers of tropical songbirds. The loss of habitat is affecting songbirds and hawks alike.

The bald eagle has recovered from its decline, and now we seek the thrill of seeing one ever yet closer. On the mountain that day we were gazing westward at a distant hawk, when someone looked behind us and caught a glimpse of a large bird close and overhead. We all turned at his exclamation and found an adult bald eagle, not fifty feet above us, and gliding slowly toward us to the west.

We watched in mostly stunned silence, with just a few murmurs of admiration and praise. Perhaps the bald eagle is a scavenger of dying fish, but there is no denying the majesty of that sight. It was just one of the local birds, but we did not complain.

The eagle was a live version of the images in our mind. The white feathers of the head and tail shone in the sun and the long, straight wings bore the brown barrel of a body onward effortlessly. The break line and nostril on the huge yellow bill were clearly visible, giving the bird a mysterious grinning expression. I imagined there was just a touch of disdain on that "smiling" face. If we save a wild creature from the ravages we ourselves inflict, then we are the ones who should be grateful.

Last week I wrote about hawks and never once mentioned the peregrine falcon. This falcon, along with the Merlin (another falcon), the golden eagle, and the goshawk, were all observed migrating past the hawk watch, but in very small numbers. The publicity about the peregrine has given many people the wrong impression. The falcons may be television stars, but they were never common, and still are very rare everywhere.

The stronghold of the peregrine is the far northern tundra, but even there they are few. The open air is their true habitat, which makes tall buildings a natural place to hang around. They breed, eat, and roost on skyscrapers and sheer cliffs, because they are the ultimate "birds of the air."

They capture their prey by striking them with great force during a dive from above. They use their chest as the battering ram, then circle and grab the stunned falling bird with their powerful talons. Then they pluck and devour the victim on one of their high perches.

Often readers tell me they have a peregrine falcon in their suburban back yard. You can see why one should be skeptical of such a notion. However, the much more common sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper's hawks are yard birds. They can camp out there, snatching a morsel of sparrow or dove off the ground or out of the bush and rip it apart right before your eyes.

These are the small and medium sizes of a trio of hawks called "accipiters." There is a large version in this grouping called the goshawk. It is powerful enough to capture even a goose, from which it gets its common name. Usually, its food is grouse and hares, and most goshawks dwell in northern forests where such prey is common.

Like the lemmings, northern hares have cyclic increases and crashes in population, so when they are very abundant the goshawk has good hunting and many young birds are raised successfully. When these prey items crash, this burgeoning population of young birds must move south to find food.

The scientific name for the goshawk is accipiter gentilis, a name given to the bird partly in error. The name is derived from the Latin word gens, meaning clan or tribe. In medieval times gentilis meant belonging to the higher classes of people, the nobility (gentlemen).

This was the time when many people kept hawks captive, and used them to catch small birds and game for the table. The middle class used the short winged accipiters for this purpose, including the goshawk. The long-winged peregrine was reserved for the nobility because of the spectacular way it hunted at great speeds in the open. However, the name is not completely inappropriate, because the goshawk's size and ferocity sometimes elevated it to the level of a "noble hawk."

The goshawk appears to be one of many northern species that is invading New England this winter. Another bird of prey has also arrived in unusual numbers, the northern shrike. This is a songbird related to the thrushes. It lacks the powerful talons of a hawk, and uses its bill to kill a lemming or small finch after it pins it to the ground.

A short while ago I was watching a group of bluebirds on a telephone wire. They were chattering in an odd way never heard before. Behind me there was a loud shriek, and I turned to see a shrike perched high in a sapling. This gray bird resembles a mockingbird, but without the long tail and obvious white wing patches. This was an immature whose black mask was hardly visible.

The shrike gets its name from the loud calls it can make, but it also is the author of a long and beautiful song on the nesting grounds. This bird flew right for the bluebirds, which did not move. He passed them by, continuing across the orchard to perch in another treetop on the far side. They knew the shrike was unlikely to attack them unless they were on the ground, but they did give him that scolding chatter. A sparrow feeding in your yard may not be so lucky.

Those of us who like to see raptors are fortunate when the prey of these northern birds is scarce and they come to New England.