Migrating Raptors Leave ‘Footprints’
Last year, the first Saturday in October had the makings of a big day at the Fire Island Hawk Watch. The wind was out of the northwest and a cold front had come through after a previous day of rain, indicating that a large number of migrating raptors should be flying by.
The hawk watch platform itself is a two-tiered wooden structure designed for hawk watchers to count migrating raptors during the fall. The upper tier has an excellent view of the horizon, but today space there is scarce. I stay below where there are three photographers. During the course of the day, the images on their camera screens are going to change how I think about bird photography and will have an unconscious effect on me that I won’t realize for nearly a year.
A fast flapping merlin, a small, stocky falcon, comes almost directly over the platform. A veteran hawk watcher says, “Give us a Fire Island look.” Soon after that someone calls out that a Cooper’s hawk, a medium-sized slender raptor with a long tail, is down by the beach. Opposite on the bay side is a slow moving osprey. The design on the osprey’s billowing golden underwings is almost black and leaves me with a feeling of awe. Minutes later an osprey comes back, perhaps the same bird. The “fish-hawk’s” head is down, its wing tips are splayed and the tail is fanned. The osprey is hunting and disappears behind some trees by the water.
Minutes later the osprey reappears. In its talons, head facing forward, is a fish more than half the bird’s size. Astounding. Someone jokes that it’s actually a flying fish carrying an osprey. One of the photographers with a very long lens has followed the osprey and witnesses it catching the fish, a fluke that he guesstimates to be one and a half to two pounds. The osprey weighs three and a half pounds. He says that the osprey was about 15 feet off shore and went into the shallow water. The bird almost completely submerged itself to get the fluke. It then flew into the wind, trying to secure a better grip on the fish, and had to land on an old boat where it secured the prize. The photographer says that his heart was really beating during this exciting photo opportunity.
I’ve never been very interested in photographing birds: they rarely pose, the effort involved is time consuming, and good equipment is cumbersome and expensive. However, the photographer’s story is compelling and the accompanying pictures didn’t require hours of patience. His images fill in the gaps that we on the platform had missed. I’m starting to realize that there’s more to bird photography than I’d thought.
A little while later a kestrel, our smallest falcon at nine inches, passes over the platform with a lot of yellow showing and passes in front of the partial remains of the moon in a cloudless blue sky. About two to three dozen tree swallows come through, a reminder that small birds can be food for fast-flying raptors. There are also a number of colorful migrating monarch butterflies. Then, starting out as specks on the horizon, 15 cormorants become larger and larger until they pass over the platform and are gone. A merlin comes over a big dune and suddenly seems to stop and snap its wings. It gets a big ”oooooooh” from everyone. Did it get a migrating monarch butterfly? Someone says no.
On the beach side there’s a merlin that sneaks up on us flying in front of the sun. The edges of its wings are letting light through as if they were translucent. Another kestrel comes past by the bay side and appears to be carrying something. Another photographer, who is frequently here, gets a shot of the bird holding a dragonfly. On his camera screen is proof of what I can only guess the bird caught on the wing. I see now what I didn’t before; that bird photography can be an aid in birding.
In mid-afternoon another merlin lands atop a wooden telephone pole having caught something. The pole top serves as a table. Someone with a birding scope says that it’s gotten a dragonfly. At the same time another of the photographers has gone close to where the merlin was perching and has taken a number of images. It’s strange seeing what’s just happened on a camera screen. I’m impressed with the pictures, particularly one that shows the merlin, after finishing its meal, lifting off the pole with its wings raised and partially bent, showing its brown and white striations. The action shown on the digital camera screen wasn’t easily seen, if at all, with binoculars from the platform. When the photographer scrolls quickly through the pictures the quick movement reminds me of the Lumière Brothers 19th century motion pictures.
At the day’s end about 160 raptors have come through, making it a banner numbers day. I’ve also gotten insights into the value of bird photography that I’d never before realized. Last winter, I got adventurous with the small zoom lens of my point-and-shoot digital camera. I had a conscious, practical reason for doing so – I wanted photos for some of my articles. The results were surprisingly quite good. This spring I bought another camera with a more than adequate zoom lens and so far the results have been quite good as well.
I now realize that the avian images taken by the three photographers had left “footprints” in my unconscious. By pointing my camera at birds, I was walking in the trail left by those “footprints.” I owe the photographers a genuine “thank you.” That Saturday was a big day in more than one way.
