The King of Hawks

This post is based on one that originally ran on Sept. 9, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

There was no birding before the binocular, there was simply ornithology.
-- Pete Dunne

When summer is ending, there is nothing like the prospect of finding an area with a clear view to the north and then waiting for the annual migration of south-bound raptors. It doesn't matter if I am on a mountain, in a park or in my front yard, looking up and seeing a small speck that could be a broad-winged hawk or a red-tailed hawk or a peregrine falcon is exciting. There are areas where hawk watches are held every year because these areas, if they are on mountain tops, provide the warm columns of air called thermals these bird need to soar and float southward, allowing them to conserve their strength. 

Southbound Cooper's Hawk, Hawk Mountain (RE Berg-Andersson)

For many years, the author and birdwatcher Pete Dunne has been coming to the hawk platform at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. His visits, in early or mid-September, are timed to when the flight of broad-wings is at its highest and other raptors are increasingly on their way to their wintering grounds. Pete always draws a big crowd. Twice I have watched him in action on the platform, encouraging young birders, providing identification tips and, if you picked up a copy of one of his many books, signing an autograph.

Pete ran the NJ Audubon center in Cape May for a long time but after suffering a stroke in 2014, he stepped down to become the group's Birding Ambassador. Nowadays, however, he has given that up and when he is not in the field he is writing a book or a blog post somewhere.

So it seems fitting that I reprint this NJ Audubon post, my 300th on this blog, in September about a man who is an institution in the birding field as well as a humble guy for whom there is no stupid question and always much to learn:

At high noon, on a mid-September day that feels like mid-August, Pete Dunne sits in a chair on the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary hawk observation platform, calling out what he sees through his binoculars and providing a wealth of observation tips.

“That’s a Turkey Vulture. It holds its wings in a V. V for vulture.” 

“There’s a Broad-wing flying just above a Red-tail in that cloud. You can see the Broad-wing is a little smaller and its wings look like a candle flame.”

“That’s a Sharp-shin passing over us. It looks like a flying mallet. A Cooper’s hawk looks like a flying crucifix.”

Pete Dunne (Margo D. Beller)

The crowd is a bit smaller than when I was last on the platform while Dunne was visiting five years ago, but it is no less avid. Up go the binoculars as sanctuary director Mike Anderson uses a clicker to count off the number of raptors seen while making sure everyone can see what Pete Dunne is seeing. Dunne visits this New Jersey Audubon sanctuary every September from his home near the Delaware Bay, close to Cape May at the state’s southern tip as the gull flies. He ran New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory for many years before a stroke in 2014 prompted him to step down.
Since then he has been New Jersey Audubon’s Birding Ambassador. His mission is to inspire your interest in birds and conservation. He comes north to Scherman Hoffman in mid-September because it is in the “Broad-wing belt” when these buteos can be seen flying south for the winter in the greatest numbers. There are more of them seen now in northern New Jersey than in Cape May, he said. Also, it gives him an excuse for the Morristown-born Dunne to visit family.

But today the weather is not cooperating, even for Pete Dunne. While the rising warm air, or thermal, will keep a flying hawk aloft, the wind is out of the south. Southbound migrants prefer a strong wind out of the north to push them along so they can conserve energy.

Shortly after I arrived at noon, two hours into his visit, five Broad-wings were counted among the raptors seen including a couple of Red-tails, some Turkey Vultures, a few Black Vultures and a Sharp-shin, the smallest of the accipiters. We waited. The small number does not bother Dunne. He remarks that the previous year on the platform there were no Broad-wings seen although there were plenty of other raptors, including Bald Eagle and Osprey. When no hawks are flying, he points out migrating Monarch butterflies and the occasional non-migrating Blue Jay. The binoculars come down and people break into small groups, sharing birding stories and other interests, including choral singing and politics.

At this point Dunne stands and asks if everyone has a pair of binoculars, and points out the ones in a box for a free loan. “Everyone knows what a loan means, right?” he says, smiling. If you don’t know how to use them, he’ll show you. He discusses differences in price and features, which can be substantial. He asks how many of those on the platform are first-time visitors. There are a few. The crowd is generally older and long-time birders and most have been to Scherman Hoffman’s platform. The platform is big enough to hold all these people and more but Mike Anderson told me Pete Dunne’s annual visit is easily the largest crowd up there. He’d love to have a daily hawk count but the usual two evils – lack of time and money – prevent that.

(Margo D. Beller)

There are young people on the platform, too, searching for specks in the sky. Dunne encourages them because they are the future. He talks to them like a friendly uncle. After all, he was once a wunderkind birder, encouraged by his father. Dunne was so much into birding that he was devastated when the father of his primary birding companion – a girl – forbid her to travel with Dunne in the woods anymore when both achieved puberty. Dunne said he didn’t understand why he now had to bird alone.

He got over it and has birded alone or leading large groups for most of his 66 years. He is a hero of mine for being self-taught and not a trained ornithologist. He was one of the creators of the World Series of Birding, an annual competition where the idea is to find as many birds as possible, either throughout New Jersey or in a particular large or small area. The competition raises money for conservation. Dunne’s first team included Roger Tory Peterson. He knew David Sibley before Sibley became famous with his illustrated birding guides. Dunne has written a slew of books including “Tales of a Low-Rent Birder” in 1986 (which is how I first heard of him), “The Art of Bird Finding” in 2011 and books on raptor identification, including his newest, “Birds of Prey.”

We once crossed paths at Cape May’s Higbee Beach as he led a very large group to a larger tour bus as I was arriving just after 7 a.m.. You’d never know he’d had a stroke. He took a moment to point out to me a singing Carolina Wren. His enthusiasm is infectious, which is a good thing if you are on a mission to expose as many people as possible to the wonder of birds.

When I left the platform an hour later, he was still up there, still talking to the crowd and watching for Broadies. According to Mike Anderson, those who came after got to see about 20 Broad-wings, four Bald Eagles and an equal number of Ospreys, five American Kestrels, Northern Harriers, Cooper’s and  Sharp-shinned hawks. Oh, and a Mississippi Kite, not a sanctuary record but it must have been quite a sight.

You don’t need a Pete Dunne to see hawks from the observation platform. There’s still plenty of migration season left for you to come up and find them.

Coming Back to Life

I am still grieving the loss of one of my dear friends, and I still hate this time of year for the shorter days and dying leaves and pods that will soon have to be raked to the curb.

April, 2017 (RE Berg-Andersson)

But there are times I am reminded that with every loss comes rebirth.

My friend is gone but my grandnephew is nearly 15 months old and growing like a weed. The cardinals and their young are still flying around the backyard. The catbirds are leaving my yard but the white-throated sparrows will be here soon for the winter. I have taken in the hummingbird feeder and I will soon be putting out the seed feeders for those passing through or staying around.

I was at the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary, the closest New Jersey Audubon facility to my house, to watch for hawks on its observation deck with Birding Ambassador and author Pete Dunne and a small crowd of people hoping to see a large kettle of broad-winged hawks. The temperature and humidity made it feel more like mid-August than mid-September, which has followed the pattern of this wacky year when we had summer-like weather in spring and fall-like weather in late summer.

Same are, Sept. 16, 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

I left the platform after an hour to hike the hills and valleys. I saw little in the way of birds except for a young female common yellowthroat warbler I pished out of the weeds. Everything else were birds I could've seen or heard in my backyard, including several turkey vultures.

I was trying to walk off my internal agitation, trying to remember why I enjoy birding. I have cut back for a number of reasons, including health concerns. I need a reason to keep going.

Then I walked into a field that had been burned back in the spring to get rid of invasive plants and allow for the seeding and growing of more native plants.

So where there was once scorched, seemingly dead earth were fields of long, seeding grasses I believe are a type of fountain grass and brilliant yellow goldenrod, along the lovely white fall flower with the ugly name of White Snakeroot.

Life after death. The priest at my friend's funeral went on about her happy life now after death and I thought how in my particular religion there is no concept of heaven and hell, just the here and now.

(Margo D. Beller)

So I am going to try to concentrate on the here and now. I am going to stop and enjoy the wildflowers now blooming, including the goldenrod and New England asters you see above. I am going to take walks and listen for what might be passing through. I am going to live in the moment. You can call it selfishness or mindfulness or whatever you want. I just need to get through this down period and hope for better days soon.

Eyes Like a Hawk

My late great-uncle Elly, in a letter -- yes, a real letter, not an email -- responding to my description of visiting a hawk platform that fall, said you have to have eyes like a hawk to find one. He was right.

I have seen enough raptors in my time to be able to tell the differences between an osprey and an eagle, a black vulture from a turkey vulture and, perhaps most difficult, a sharpshinned from a Cooper's hawk and both from their larger accipiter relative, a northern goshawk.

One of many bald eagles on Scott's Mountain. (RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

That's when the birds are relatively close. When I go to a hawk platform, I might as well be a novice.

If you are on a hawk platform and you are counting the number of, say, broadwing hawks flying south to their winter grounds in order to give a complete count, you have to be able to see a speck in the sky, then be able to train your binoculars or scope on it and then identify it, all while the bird is hundreds of feet high and flying fast with a stiff tailwind.

For that is what raptors do, they wait for the wind to come hard out of the north and then allow themselves to be pushed along ridge lines where they can be kept aloft by warm air off those ridges. The Hawk Mountain platform in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania is one such spot. So is the Chimney Rock Hawk Watch between the two Watchung Mountains of New Jersey and the Racoon Ridge Hawk Watch in the Kitanny Mountains.

I have been to many of these hawk platforms and a few others - the New Jersey Audubon Scherman Hoffman sancturary, the Sandy Hook platform, the Cape Henlopen platform in Delaware - including my own unofficial platform, back when I was working in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, atop the Palisades. (I'd come out on my break and watch eagles, ospreys and assorted hawks follow the Hudson River south.)

(RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

I enjoyed my time at these places, but my favorite hawk platform is atop Scott's Mountain over the Merrill Creek Reservoir in New Jersey, a short flight from the Delaware River.

We try to go at least once a year, and have become such irregular regulars that when we made our first 2015 visit in late September, several people thought we had been there earlier. Alas, no, we missed the big week when the broadwing hawk - the smallest of the buteo hawks of eastern North America - flew through in the thousands. These are early travelers. As autumn goes on, the number of broadwings will decrease and the number of eagles - bald and golden - and accipiters and redtailed and redshouldered hawks will rise.

We drive up to the top of the mountain, get our folding chairs from the trunk, then say hello and sit down, binoculars at the ready. Then I have to get back in practice picking fast-flying birds out of the sky. It isn't easy.

Unlike a lot of the other hawk platforms, where the counters are serious and those real regulars stick to themselves and ignore irregular visitors such as myself, the regulars at Scott's Mountain are very friendly, very helpful and very good spotters. Paul, the lead counter the day we showed up, was on birds no one else even saw coming. He usually is, even when he's not the official counter. At least for my old eyes, I couldn't even see the dot in the sky.

One of many sharpshinned hawks on Scott's Mtn. (RE Berg-Andersson 2015)

Standing at a hawk watch once with Pete Dunne, he told how to look for broadwings beneath clouds and how turkey vultures fly like a man walking a tightrope with his arms extended out and slightly up. I tried to apply this knowledge but when you can't even see a dot, you have to trust that the lead counter or his assistants (there are usually four, spread along the parking lot to see as much sky as possible) is right. Paul was always right, and he was always patient in directing me to find the bird.

It is nice to be able to sit, too. Most platforms are hard climbs to the top and when you get there at last you have to find a seat on rocks that are far from comfortable. Or, you carry your chairs with you (or a pillow) and then hope that if you can make it all the way up without falling you can find a big enough space to open the chair and sit down. Neither is a given. 

From my chair on Scott's Mountain a few of the birds stayed low enough for me to easily find: the two resident bald eagles taking off after another eagle passing through and too close to their nest; an American kestrel, the smallest of the falcons, looking so colorful against the deep blue sky; the skein of migrating Canada geese found as I was looking at some broadwings Paul had pointed out.

Goldfinches, backyard, Sept. 27, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

This is, without a doubt, the easiest birding I do except for what I see out my back porch.

(And there has been quite a lot. Thanks to an investment in a thistle sock and enough seed to put in a second feeder, we've had as many as 20 goldfinches feeding at the same time. Whether it be the weedy plants drying up or yanked out by homeowners or no one else having thistle feeders up, we have been reaping the benefits.)

MH was told decades ago he'd never see a bald eagle in the wild in his lifetime. That was after the overuse of DDT nearly decimated the eagles and the falcons. Luckily, that scoutmaster was wrong and we've seen many majestic eagles since then, and other birds, too.

A Legend of the Fall

It was with great shock and no small sense of accomplishment that I realized recently that I have managed to see or hear every eastern warbler except one.

I have seen the relatively common ones - black-throated green, black and white, myrtle - and the ones I see less often such as the magnolia, Blackburnian and cerulean. I've even had the really hard ones - the usually secretive mourning warbler that popped up on a fence to sing to its mate at Great Swamp, and a bright Wilson's warbler that suddenly flew in to forage over my head in Central Park. I've seen the worm-eating warbler and heard the song of the reclusive Kentucky warbler.

Black-throated green warbler (Margo D. Beller)

Most of these I saw or heard in the spring, when the trees were bare, the birds were brightly colored and they were singing to establish a territory, either for that day en route to someplace farther north or for the rest of the breeding season.

Looking for warblers during the southbound migration is much more difficult. The birds don't sing and the males become duller in color, more like the females. There are juveniles, too, and these may look even more different. And there are many, many leaves on the trees. If I see something move, it is as likely to be a falling leaf (or a butterfly) as a bird.

This is what has made it very difficult to find that final warbler, the Connnecticut.

It is large for a warbler, and has a nice big eye ring that stands out on a dark head. But it likes to skulk around in the underbrush. It is one of those birds - the rufous hummingbird is another - that often take a more easterly route south in the fall. So while there might be one report of a Connecticut warbler in New Jersey, where I live, in the spring, there are likely to be a lot more reports during the southbound migration.

The Connecticut is the only reason you will see me looking for warblers at this time of year, when the trees are leafed out and the dull birds are silent. At this time of year you are more likely to see me at a hawk watch - Hawk Mountain, Scott's Mountain, Cape May - looking into the sky for osprey, eagle or hawks.

Crowd at Hawk Mountain hawkwatch, September 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

You might even see me at the shore or a sod farm, looking for plovers, sandpipers and other unexpected migrants. At least on a sod field you can see the birds, and the ones at the shore are usually not moving around too much.

Shorebirds, Brigantine National Wildlife Sanctuary, August 2013 (Margo D. Beller)

The other day proved my point. Plus, just to make a hard job harder, I had been to the eye doctor that morning and had drops put in to dilate my pupils. Everything I saw in a sunny meadow had a corona of fuzziness, and everything I saw in the shady woods lacked detail and definition. I could still use my ears but I had to depend on MH for a description and my years of bird knowledge to figure out an identification based on size, shape and habit.

It wasn't easy.

We went to a park where a birder had reported seeing a Connecticut, and was even nice enough to give details as to where. We went there even tho' the report was two days old and the wind had come out of the north the previous night and the birds were pushing south. We went anyway because it was a sunny Saturday and, as usual, after a week of working in the house I needed to get out.

We got to the directed spot. We stood and listened. Silence. We walked up the stairs of a nearby bird blind and looked down for something skulking in the brush. Nothing.

I, a blind birder, was in a bird blind. Perfect. We did not find the Connecticut warbler that day although we saw a female black-throated blue and several black and whites.

There will be other reports of Connecticut warblers in the next few weeks, I am sure, and the experienced birders who seem to find everything at the drop of a hat no matter what the time of day or the season will see their fifth or 50th such bird. I may try once again or I may wait until next year.

Eyes to the Sky

When I was a child, I did not look forward to Labor Day. September in general and Labor Day in particular meant returning to school. This started to change when I went to college. The week or so before Labor Day meant heading back to Boston. I enjoyed being away from home.

Now that I am an adult, especially one who works from home in an office facing the street, I understand how my parents must've felt when it was time to send me back to school. I am greatly looking forward to having assorted children safely elsewhere during the day and then inside doing homework as the evening comes, earlier each day.

I only regret the usual Thursday after Labor Day this year is the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashana, new year's, and the children will have a few extra days of liberty before school starts the following Monday.

Migrating Cooper's hawk by Margo D. Beller

September 1 is the "new year" in another sense, too. It is when hawk watches, those areas where it is best to see raptors heading south take advantage of mountain ridges and rising warm air known as thermals, open for "business."

I've written before about the joy of standing on a mountain top and watching raptors - osprey, eagle, accipiters, buteos, falcons - flying over you. In the case of Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (one of the best-known hawk watches in this part of the country) you are up so high the hawks are practically at eye level.

But there's a price for this access. It is hard and in some places very rocky climbing up to the North lookout, the one at the very top. (There are others, with varying degree of view, along the way.) It is about as hard, if not worse, coming down. My husband and I have been up there twice. The first time, any discomfort we may have had was ignored as we found assorted warblers and others, including a life bird for us, a Bicknell's thrush.

The second time, however, we had no birds to distract us and we were a few years older. I nearly fell twice trying to balance myself on a rock as we were heading downhill. By the time we got back to the relatively easy bottom part of the trail, I had to admit we would never get up to North lookout again unless we grew our own wings.

Luckily, there are other hawk watches and not all of them require the same kind of strenuous climbing. In New Jersey the ones I have visited are Chimney Rock (a short, flat path from the parking lot), Montclair (a staircase until you get near the top, and then you use a ladder to get up the final rocks) and Wildcat Ridge, which has been counting since mid-August (you can climb this or cheat and use the road up to the cellphone tower, which is what the official counters do).

Redtailed hawk, 2013. Photo by RE Berg-Andersson

My favorite is Scott's Mountain, in Harmony Township, next to the Merrill Creek reservoir. You drive up, you park, you remove your folding chair and you watch the hawks with a great group of people eager to share tips, stories and snacks, led by Henry Kielblock.

The nice thing about this time of year - besides kids back in school - is you can see  hawks anywhere just by facing north on a day when the wind turns and comes from the north or northwest. When I was working in Englewood Cliffs, in an office across a highway from the top of the Palisades, the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, I saw a parade of hawks just by coming out the office door during the warmest part of the day and looking north.

I have also found raptors in my backyard - Cooper's hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, redtail and, the most unusual one, an immature northern goshawk.

Other birds will be migrating, too, of course. If you keep your eyes open, once you get the kids off to school, you'll be amazed by what you see.

Me at the Scott's Mountain hawk watch, 2013

It's That Time Again...

As I write, in mid-August, we had a break from the usual hot, humid weather with cool, dry air and bright sunshine. In the evenings, the wind died down and the skies were clear and cold.

Black-throated green warbler

During that time, some birds started heading south.

It doesn't seem like that long ago I was heading into my favorite birding areas to seek the migrants heading north to the breeding grounds. Now, suddenly, I am reading reports of black-throated green warblers and American redstarts passing by the hawk watches of Sandy Hook and Chimney Rock.

As a kid I would get restless in August because I knew I would soon have to go back to school in September. As an adult, if I haven't taken a vacation - and nowadays as a contractor it costs me a day's pay to take a day off, including holidays - I get restless in August, remembering my family's annual vacation.

In August, the birds get restless to fly south. As noted, many birds are already on the move when the right conditions permit. Sept. 1 is when many of the hawkwatches, including the one at Scott's Mountain abutting the Merrill Creek Reservoir in Harmony Township, NJ, set up shop to count all the southbound raptors.

Is my desire to "fly away" in August because, after 10 years of following them, I am in sync with the birds as much as to have some time off from a stressful job? I think so.

Scott's Mountain Hawk Watch, 2012

I read a study recently, "No-Vacation Nation Revisited" by the Center for Economy and Policy Research, that found the U.S. was dead last of the 19 "rich" nations that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in terms of providing guaranteed vacation days and holidays.

This makes perfect sense if you consider we are a nation where you start a business, work hard and then expect your employees to work just as hard and be happy to be employed to keep the operation going. The Horatio Alger myth of picking oneself up by the bootstraps says nothing about a vacation once successful. Cheap labor working every day but Sunday was once the rule until unions were created and grew. Now, with unions on the wane, we seem to be backsliding.

Remember, the U.S. government has passed no law ordering private companies to provide vacation. It's not the American Way.

At one job we only got holidays off because the U.S. Mail wasn't delivered anyway. That was back when newspapers and other businesses needed the mail to get the product out. Now, with the Internet, that isn't necessary. You also need fewer employees. So my current, Web-based employer cuts back on staff - to which it would have to pay benefits - and bulks up on "contractors," to which it does not. 

House wren, 2013

 

 

And if you don't want to do it, there are lots of people looking for work who can replace you.

Birds don't have to worry about that. They just need to worry about mating, breeding, raising young and then getting back to an area where they can continue eating until it is time to go north once again.

In August they sense the days are getting shorter. In my part of New Jersey it is now dark before 8pm EDT. At the time of the solstice two months ago, it got dark 40 minutes later. It is also now darker in the morning, with the cardinals waking me at first light around 6 rather than 5:30am.

So the birds in the north know it is getting time to leave. When it gets cold there are also fewer bugs to eat. The young are flying and able to feed themselves on the seeds of spent flowers and weeds and shrubs. When the wind comes from the north, a small bird - such as the house wren that spent some time at the nest box I provided - instinctively will take advantage of that push southward. Every little bit helps on a long, perilous journey.

So here I sit, earthbound in August. I wish I could drop everything and fly south to where it will be warm and sunny and filled with good food and so enjoy myself for a few months before I have to head back north and return to my responsibilities.

Earthbound

There comes a time every September when a cold front pushes through, the wind comes out of the north and the sky clears to a cloudless, brilliant blue.

Sept. 11, 2001 was one such day, unfortunately.

But so was this past Saturday, Sept. 15. It was a day many of us in the birding community were awaiting because it means many of the birds that migrate south to Central and South America in fall would be on the move, that north wind giving them a big push and allowing them to conserve their energy in flight.

Mid-September is when broadwing hawks, the smallest of the buteos (a group that include redtails), travel south in the greatest numbers. Having a cold front pass through in mid-September and on a Saturday made it ideal for people like me to travel to one of the many hawk platforms in New Jersey and hope for a good show.

Pete Dunne

It was by dumb luck that I found out Pete Dunne - NJ Audubon official, prolific author and hawk identification master - was going to be at Scherman Hoffman in Bernardsville, NJ, at the sanctuary’s platform to watch for hawks, and hawk his newly revised second edition of his 1988 book “Hawks in Flight: The Field Identification of North American Migrant Raptors,” written with David Allen Sibley and Clay Sutton.

Scherman Hoffman, a New Jersey Audubon sanctuary, has one of the easier hawk platforms to get to - you take an elevator to the third floor. No climbing unless you take the stairs.

Having Dunne up there was both fascinating and depressing. He knows his stuff and his enthusiasm is contagious. Somehow, he always saw the incoming raptors. He’d be autographing books, or talking to people about their birding experiences or imparting wisdom on the way to tell the difference between a turkey vulture and an eagle in flight (the vulture looks like a man walking a tightrope) and suddenly he’d call out, “There are birds by that comma to the left of the cloud, about to come into the blue!”

What? Which cloud? What comma? What birds?

You would think something big like an eagle would be easy to see high up on a clear day, but you’d be wrong. Broadwings, despite the distinctive white stripe in the tail and black border on the wings, are even harder to ID when they are way up there unless, like Dunne, you can tell it by its shape.

(Broadwings are compact and more elegant than the larger redtail, which Dunne considers “lumpy.” The fans of Pale Male would likely disagree.)

What we were waiting for here on terra firma are the kettles, those groups of anywhere from a few to a few hundred broadwings that circle in a group on a rising warm current of air and then circle around (as tho’ being stirred in a kettle) and use the centrifugal force to give them more speed when they stream out.

As we mere mortals started getting frustrated - where ARE they? - Dunne talked us through, at one point standing behind a woman and literally raising her binoculars until she could see them.

OOOH.

“Thousands of people would kill to have what we have right now,” he said of watching hawks in the sunshine, the birds more easily visible as the clouds increased.



A local "lumpy" redtail, hanging out watching the hawk watchers.

The hardest part was standing for hours, desperately looking for a speck (at one point looking straight up), straining eyes, neck and back - especially the back - while trying to figure out what kind of bird we were seeing. After all, that's why we were there. I envied the couple who not only brought chairs but lunch in a cooler bag. They were in for the long haul and they were going to be comfortable.

The birds, meanwhile, soar above you, untethered to the land, seemingly weightless. For the moments I watch them I forget I am heavy, earthbound, as “lumpy“ as one of those redtails Pete Dunne made fun of.

Everyone needs to look up once in a while. Too often we go about our daily lives, in a rut, moving from point A to point B, and fail to see what’s flying over as we drive the highway or sit in the house with a videogame.

People need to learn. They need to get a book - maybe one of Dunne’s or one of the thousands of books now out there to help you find, identify or bring to your garden just about every type of bird out there - and learn something about birds and, by extension, something of the world around us.

At one point on the increasingly crowded platform, a young man of 16 started peppering Dunne with questions about the redtails he’d been seeing in his yard. As Dunne patiently answered his questions, looked at his photos and made approving noises about his illustrations of birds, I asked the teenager’s father about him.

His son has been birding since he was very small. They are always traveling around, the father driving and the son taking pictures. The father travels a lot for work, he said, and it is not unusual for him to take the red-eye flight home, get his son and go birding.

“So one day I’m in Singapore and the next I’m in Great Swamp,” he said with a smile, watching his hyperactive son.

It is good to see someone young and interested. Too often my husband and I are among the younger people in a crowd of birders. Interested young people won't sit by and do nothing when stupid people try to "overdevelop" the land or pollute the water or air.

Older people, if they have grown children and are lucky enough to have the time and be comfortable financially so they can afford the books and cameras and binoculars, will likely make up the bulk of those attending the conference Dunne is spearheading for New Jersey Audubon out of Cape May Oct. 26-28, a major money maker.

He’ll be charging people for the same tutorial he gave for free in Bernardsville.

Too often we are earthbound in our thinking. We are not the only species around. We are all interconnected.

That’s why we who are fascinated by birds stand or sit on the tops of mountains or man-made platforms and watch the hawks. We are all trying to survive. They are moving high above life’s constant turmoil from breeding grounds to below the equator where it will be summer while we have winter. We walk the Earth, also trying to get from point A to point B as well as we can.

While they face more danger, I think the birds do it with more style.