For birdwatchers in the Blue Ridge this is an exciting time of year. Millions of raptors – hawks and eagles, falcons and kites – are making their way south for the winter.
On a high hill overlooking Interstate 64 between Crozet and Waynesboro, five birders are parked in folding chairs. They’ve been coming since mid-August and will stay through November, patiently scanning the skies. Among them is Betty Mooney of Charlottesville who was on hand when a large flock of broad winged hawks passed through.
“We had over 600 in one group,” she recalls. “Luckily there were a number people from out of town here at that moment, and one woman said, ‘I’ll never forget this for the rest of my life.’ And that’s the kind of feeling it gives you. You just don’t see things like this every day.”
Victor Laubach is the Rockfish Gap coordinator for Hawk Watch. He leaves his laboratory at UVA’s medical school on weekends to count the birds passing by.
“When all the hawks and raptors are in their breeding grounds up north or in their wintering grounds down south, they’re spread out everywhere, but when they migrate, they migrate through certain paths, and they concentrate and we can really get a good assessment of their numbers,” he explains.
That’s important, because raptors eat small mammals, insects and fish – creatures that may carry environmental toxins in their cells. If bird populations are down, it might be a sign that pollution has reached dangerous levels, a problem we ignore at our peril. Also taking a toll on raptors, Laubach says, is the loss of wild lands. “Every year someone builds a house on a piece of land, and there’s one acre gone, and then the same thing happens in their wintering grounds in the South and in South America. Rainforests are diminishing by square miles every day.”
The exceptions are raptors that can adapt to new circumstances.
“Bald eagles don’t just prey on live animals,” Laubach explains. “They eat carrion and anything they can find – fish, anything laying along a harbor, but there are other raptors like sharp shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks and kestrels. They’re special, and they only eat a very narrow range of prey, and if that’s gone they have no choice but to perish.”
To keep up their strength during migration, he adds, these birds do take time out to rest.
“At the end of the day we can see a thousand broad-winged hawks just fall down from the sky and rest and disappear into the trees, and the next morning you can watch them one by one rise up and gather and then move on south again.”
And Raptors seem to have chosen this route specifically because it’s easy on their wings.
“The Appalachian Mountains form a barrier down the east coast, and when they have northwest winds, those winds just constantly provide an updraft, so the birds can basically just coast for miles and miles, kind of like a surfer on a surfboard.”
This natural show draws birders from around the region to see raptors soaring or circling slowly on rising currents of air in a pattern known as a kettle.
“It’s just such an exciting thing to see a bird that big fly over you,” says Betty Mooney. “There’s just nothing like it. Sometimes I feel like if I get really close to the eagles that I’m actually flying.”
“If you’ve never seen a huge kettle of broad wings fill the sky, they come over in the hundreds and thousands and it’s against these white beautiful clouds, and it’s a sight you’ll never forget,” adds Jennifer Jowdy.
The volunteers will share their numbers with the Hawk Migration Association of North America which oversees more than 200 sites around the nation, 15 of them in Virginia. Click here to find a site near you.
