Raptor Roundup: Sharp-shinned Hawk and Cooper's Hawk

Cooper’s Hawk, Accipiter cooperii

Sharp-shinned Hawk, Accipiter striatus

Of all the raptors I most dreaded having to identify, none were more stressful than the Sharp-shinned Hawk/Cooper’s Hawk pairing. Many of my birder friends have told me repeatedly the ways to differentiate the two in flight, but without immediately applying this information to real-live birds it would soon fall out of my head. As an artist, I learned almost all my birds by memorizing field marks and body shape- behavioral identifiers tend to come second for me. But boy oh boy is behavior a wonderful thing for identifying Sharpies and Cooper’s!

Juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk just after taking off from a snag. Notice the length of the streaking on its chest.

Juvenile Cooper’s Hawk. Notice the streaking on the chest, as well as the curved tail.

Fortunately for me, Sharp-shinned Hawks and Cooper’s Hawks started migrating through Connecticut in steady streams by the end of September. Once there were plenty of birds to watch, I discovered my friends were right: it is pretty straightforward to tell the difference between the two birds based solely on behavior. The more compact Sharp-shinned Hawk does a great “flappity flap-flap” as it flies, with rapid wingbeats in succession before a glide. The larger, longer-winged Cooper’s Hawk has slower, more shallow wingbeats. This is now one of my favorite ways to identify hawks, because I love the sweet satisfaction of identifying a distant speck of a raptor doing a quick wing flap as a solid Sharp-shinned Hawk!

I also discovered that the two accipiters really do have different body shapes. The Sharp-shinned Hawk is more compact and has smaller wings; it resembles a t-shape in flight. The Cooper’s Hawk has a head that is much larger; it looks more like a cross in flight because you can actually see the head extend past the wings. Between the body shape and the wing flaps, I found that it actually becomes very straightforward to tell the two apart.

Even though it is really satisfying to be able to identify them from afar, it is always amazing to get to see these hawks up close. Sharp-shinned Hawks and Cooper’s Hawks have beautiful patterning as both adults and juveniles. The adults of both species have subtle navy heads and backs, orange barring across the chest, and blood-red eyes; the juveniles have orange rusty streaking across their bodies and sharp yellow eyes. At the Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch, we deploy a plastic owl decoy atop a dogwood tree just off of the hawk watch lawn to try to convince smaller hawks to come closer for a better view. It works really well at attracting these accipiters, and a few times a week I would have the chance to see them in beautiful detail as they soared right overhead!

Adult Sharp-shinned Hawk diving at our plastic owl

Juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk diving at our plastic owl

Now that it is late November, the accipiters have mostly finished migrating through. There are of course a few stragglers, but it is strange to go a whole day without seeing a single one after they were so commonplace. Fortunately for me (but not so much for the little birds at the feeder), a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk and a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk appear to have moved into the property. I see them exploding out of the bushes and sprinting across the treelines hunting. Just this week, I was standing beneath our kiosk trying to avoid getting wet in the rain and the Cooper’s Hawk flew in as if from nowhere and landed on the fence outside the lawn. Its appearance was so sudden and so silent that I actually jumped back in surprise. We stared at each other for a split second before it barreled off into the grasses, leaving me feeling sorry for the tiny critters that might not fare as well from such an unexpected encounter!

Bird of the Day: Common Cuckoo

Common Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus

What a season it has been for rarities! Last Sunday, an insanely rare (and lost) Common Cuckoo was discovered in Snake Den State Park near Providence, Rhode Island. To give a sense of how lost this bird is, consider that the Common Cuckoo comes from Eurasia- making it about 3,000 miles from home if home were Ireland. If it came from China, it would be 11,000 miles lost! Since Common Cuckoos migrate to Africa for the winter, it is likely that this bird was caught in one of the crazy weather systems that have been occurring and was blown off course during migration.

On Monday morning, after learning that the bird had stayed put over night, I jumped in the car and drove the 2.5 hours to Rhode Island. It felt a little indulgent, but this is only the third record of Common Cuckoo in the lower 48 and it is such a beautiful bird. I really wanted to see it!

When I finally turned onto the residential backroad outside the state park, I knew immediately that I had arrived. It was like a scene from out of “The Big Year.” The two-lane road could barely fit two lanes of traffic to begin with, and was now packed on one side with at least fifty cars. I added my car to the parked parade while trying to calculate the value of the optics and camera gear all trained on the wooded edge beyond a small field. There were somewhere between fifty and seventy-five people socially all lined up behind a rock wall separating the road from the field, all more or less socially distanced and wearing masks. I recognized a number of people- it’s amazing how the Connecticut birders all get around to all of the rare birds!

When I finally started to look for the bird, I at first could not see it. I assumed it was somewhere in the woods, and we would need to wait for it to fly back out before I could see it. My assumption turned out to be wrong, as someone quickly pointed out the bird to me and I realized that it was so camouflaged it could sit right out on a tree and I could miss it!

Wooly Bear

To my delight, the Common Cuckoo did not stay sitting still for long. It flew down into the field below it, opened its mouth wide to reveal its adorable pink gape, and chomped down a wooly bear caterpillar. Common Cuckoos are unusual in that they actually really like hairy caterpillars while many other birds do not. I found it amazing that even on another continent, this cuckoo had managed to find its preferred food source (in November nonetheless!) After eating, it flew up to another branch- but this time it flew right at the crowd, landing about fifteen feet from the road. I could not believe my timing!

The Common Cuckoo really was beautiful. Its monochromatic striped chest was offeset by a soft brown back and head interspersed with light gray mottling. The best part was the sharp yellow eye that stood out against all the gray and brown tones. I felt bad for it as it was buffeted by the strong wind and the cold.

Coming in for a landing!

It felt really strange to see this bird against a New England fall backdrop. My grandma would tell me stories of growing up in Ireland and hearing the cuckoo calling in the evening. (That call, by the way, is the sound one hears in old antique cuckoo clocks.) As a result, I have always imagined the Common Cuckoo in a landscape of old Irish farmland. Back in Eurasia. the Common Cuckoo is indeed that- common. It has been a cultural symbol of spring and fall, with many rhymes and local traditions based upon this. Have you ever heard the song, “April, Come she Will” by Simon and Garfunkel? Turns out that those lyrics are based on an old rhyme about the Common Cuckoo! (Mind blown!)

The cuckoo comes in April
She sings her song in May
In June she changes her tune
In July she prepares to fly
In August go she must.

While no one was talking about it while gazing in adoration at this amazing rarity, Common Cuckoos are like our Brown-headed Cowbirds. They are brood parasites that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds so that their young are raised by the unsuspecting parents of the invaded nests. Brood parasites tend to get a bad rap, so it was nice that this poor lost bird could just be a heroic survivor today.

I have to say, it was definitely worth the drive to see this bird. I know many people are going to see it from even further away, but considering travel abroad is so terrible right now it feels like this is the easiest way to see this beautiful creature. It is still around after a week, and so long as it has a supply of caterpillars who knows how long it will stay! (Unless of course, go it must.)

Bird of the Day: Tennessee Warbler

Tennessee Warbler, Leiothlypis peregrina

When one thinks of warblers, one of the things that most often comes to mind is color. So to me, the Tennessee Warbler always seems to feel a little left out from the rest of the warblers. With a grayish head, white undertail coverts, and olive-yellow-green all over the rest of its body, the Tennessee Warbler can appear very drab compared to the bright yellows, oranges, blues, and greens of other warblers. I have to admit that in the rush of searching for Blackburnians, Black-throated Blues, and other brightly colored birds I often forget to look for Tennessees! So this fall, I was surprised to see a beautiful green-yellow warbler with a striking eyeline bounce out of the goldenrod. At first, it felt like I was looking at a Red-eyed Vireo- but something about it was off. When I finally realized it was a Tennessee, I could barely remember the last time I had seen one! It seemed so much more colorful than the last time I had seen one in spring.

Tennessee Warbler having a chat with a Yellow-rumoed Warbler!

Tennessee Warblers, despite their name, do not breed in the state of Tennessee. Their closest breeding grounds are actually in Michigan. Like most warblers, they pass through the eastern United States during spring and fall migration. For whatever reason, this year there were dozens of them at Greenwich Audubon. I have now seen more Tennessee Warblers in four weeks than I have in eight years of birding combined. On many days during late September and early October, there were five to seven Tennessee Warblers in the goldenrod. On one magical day, a fallout brought about 25 of them to the grounds. Since they usually spend their time high in trees, it was great to be able to see them so closely in the goldenrod.

By now, most if not all of the Tennessee Warblers have moved on from the northeast to finish their journey to Central and South America. When they get there, they will add nectar to their food repertoire. They eat this nectar in a way that is unusual: instead of getting it from the open part of a flower, they pierce the flower tube at the base and thus do not actually help in the pollination process.

A Tennessee Warbler and an American Goldfinch enjoying the same plant!

Next spring, I am going to make a concerted effort to see more of these sleek warblers!

Raptor Roundup: American Kestrel

American Kestrel, Falco sparverius

With its beautiful slate-blue wings and head, chestnut back, and black mask, the American Kestrel is strikingly marked. Tiny but mighty, it is North America’s most widespread, yet smallest falcon. They can be found near open, grassy areas, where they can often be observed hunting from a perch or hovering in midair as they wait to dive on their prey. Although they usually eat invertebrates like dragonflies, grasshoppers, shrews, mice, bats, and small songbirds, these fierce little falcons have been documented taking prey as large as a Northern Flicker!

Most American Kestrels will migrate to the southern United States for the winter, though some will travel further to Central America. Their peak migration time is between mid-September to early October along the Atlantic Coast. At some hawk watches like Cape May, NJ and Kiptopeke State Park, VA, there are days when hundreds or even thousands of kestrels migrate through in a single day!

An American Kestrel takes a break from its long flight to sit on a pole at Cape May Point beach. Cape May, NJ

Since starting as a hawk watcher at the beginning of September, I have felt very grateful to American Kestrels for being, all things relative, on the easier side of raptors to identify even when they are far away. Like all falcons, their wings taper to a sharp point like a boomerang. I have noticed that sometimes a gliding Broad-winged Hawk can position its wings in such a way that they become superficially pointy and tapered, so I have learned to watch out for this. On the flipside, an American Kestrel with its wings and tail fully stretched out can appear superficially stocky enough to resemble a Sharp-shinned Hawk. However, Kestrels have many more identifiers that help clinch their ID:

• Kestrels are very orangey on their backs and appear white on their bellies, which can be seen even from far away in good lighting.

• American Kestrels are dainty flyers. They feel light and airy, and bounce around in the air instead of jetting powerfully forward like other falcons. At times, their flight can remind me of the bat-like flight of Common Nighthawks, though usually not as extreme. They will flap and glide more often than other falcons.

• American Kestrels are the only falcon to hover.

• A great line from my hawk watching friend: “If you had time to look at a falcon to figure out what it was, it was a kestrel. A Merlin or a Peregrine would be gone already.”

When they return in the spring, these tiny falcons will look to build their nests in hollowed out tree cavities. Unfortunately, although they are widespread their populations are in decline due to habitat loss and pesticides. If they continue to decline at their current rate, their populations will decline by fifty percent by 2075. You can help American Kestrels by building kestrel nest boxes, or by leaving hollow trees standing to provide them places to nest. Information about monitoring kestrel nests, and building kestrel nest boxes, can be found on The Peregrine Fund's American Kestrel Partnership website.

Moments after I took this photo, the kestrel disappeared into its nest cavity right below where it was perched. Ucross, WY

Bird of the Day: Magnolia Warbler (Fall Plumage)

Magnolia Warbler, Setophaga magnolia

For a birder, nothing says “spring” quite like the arrival of colorful singing warblers. They are vividly colored, each with their own unique hues and patterns and loudly belted songs. Fall warblers are a different story! When I look at a fall warbler, I often feel like I am looking at something that looks so different from it’s spring counterpart. Yellow seems to be the fall color of choice, making so many fall warblers look similar to each other as they flit by. And, instead of singing, they are uttering little chips that all sound the same.

I have not been on the east coast to experience fall warblers in two years, and I was never very good at identifying them to begin with. I rolled out the door to do some fall migration birding and was overwhelmed by how much I felt like a beginning birder all over again. All the warblers looked impossibly the same. I was grateful to find some warblers, like the Black-and-white and Black-throated Green, that resembled their spring counterparts when they stood still long enough for me to get a good look at them. Northern Parulas look much more drab, but still resemble their spring counterparts. Eventually, I found myself looking at a warbler that I could just not recognize at all. It had a yellow belly, gray back, and a white eyering. “It’s a Magnolia Warbler!” my friend tells me.

I look at it incredulously. While many warblers are named after their color patterns, the Magnolia Warbler’s name is less of an identifier and more of a coincidence. Ornithologist Alexander Wilson just happened to spot his first one in a Mangolia Tree during spring migration, although really these birds are more associated with coniferous trees during their breeding season. Nonetheless, without its iconic thick black mask, black back, and black-striped chest, I have trouble buying that the bird I am looking at is a Magnolia Warbler. It looks like a totally different bird. Eventually I find the relics of its spring plumage: the thin streaks in its yellow chest, the gray head and body, the white eyering. I admittedly feel a little disappointed- it feels so bland in comparison to the spring male.

Fall Magnolia Warbler in (unfortunately invasive) porcelain berry.

After a few moments of watching it, though, I realize I find the white eyering in the gray face against its pink beak endearing. The combination gives the warbler an expression that feels excited, surprised, slightly confused-perhaps all three at once. I think that is how I would feel if I started every day in a new place on traveling thousands of miles! Without the sharp contrasts created by its black feathers, the bird feels softer and smoother overall. The gray is now the darkest color without the striking black, and I can appreciate the subtle steel-blue grays in the feathers that I never have before. I love the juxtaposition of that steel-blue color against the lemon yellow. I cannot help myself, I blurt out “this bird is ADORABLE.”

Male Magnolia Warbler in spring

By the time the Magnolia Warbler flits away, I am smitten. I wish it well on its epic journey. Over the next few weeks, this tiny bird will fly over the Gulf of Mexico and beyond to Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and the Yucatan Peninsula. This 3,000-plus mile journey will then be repeated in the spring, when the Magnolia Warblers will return. This time, when I see the male with the black mask, I am going to remember the adorable bird from the fall and reconcile the two as a single species.

Raptor Roundup: Broad-winged Hawk

Broad-winged Hawk, Buteo platypterus

Broad-winged Hawks are small buteos that prey on frogs, toads, snakes, insects, small mammals, and small birds. They are distributed throughout eastern North America, as far west as British Columbia and Texas. Every year, they migrate south. They will travel as far as Brazil as they funnel through Mexico and Central America chasing their food sources.

Broad-winged Hawks are compact buteos. Their primary feathers taper so that their wings look like flickering candle flames. A large white band across a dark tail is also helpful for identification.

The most amazing way to identify these hawks, however, is to watch them in migration as they kettle and stream overhead in enormous groups. Before hawk watching, at most I had seen five Broad-wingeds soaring together. This week, I got to witness a spectacle that was truly one of the most awing things I have seen in birding. On Monday, wind and temperature conditions were optimal for big movements of these birds. I waited all day with a group of eager hawk watchers looking for Broad-wingeds to soar over, but throughout the day only trickles passed by. Then, all of a sudden, at around 3PM, the kettles got bigger. Groups of 20, 30, 40 Broad-wingeds started to fill the sky. All around there were kettles and streams of Broad-winged Hawks, and I could barely keep track of them. Over the next hour and a half, 1,200 Broad-winged hawks passed overhead. The biggest kettle had 85 birds.

A small section of a sky filled with Broad-winged Hawks. I would need a wide-angle lens to accurately capture the size of their kettle.

Tuesday was another great day, with over 500 Broad-wingeds. On Wednesday and Thursday, the winds shifted, and almost no raptors of any kind were seen at all. Then, on Friday, the winds changed back to optimal Northernly gusts. All day long we waited and waited, but the wind seemed to be too gusty and only a few individual birds passed by. Then, at 2:50 PM, it started. An enormous kettle was spotted to the east, with easily a hundred birds. As they rose up and kettled, streams from below kept feeding into the cloud of raptors until there were at least six-hundred birds forming a sort of double helix as they rose. My thumb was getting so sore from clicking my counter I could barely move it. Switching hands, I looked to the south to see another enormous group of Broad-wingeds gathering. There were hundreds of birds rising, soaring, streaming, kettling, and in the span of about ten minutes I depressed my counter clicker 1,497 times. By the time the day was ending, a final kettle of Broad-wingeds settling down for the day pushed the total of Broad-winged Hawks to 2,698 birds. There were so many birds, you could look anywhere in the sky and see them. Seeing so many individual birds pouring across the sky was one of those things that made me feel truly privileged to be alive to see such magic.

Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch has averaged over 9,000 Broad-winged Hawks in a season. This week alone, we counted over 4,500. I now understand why hawk watching is so addicting- I want to break that record! Whether we do or not, I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to witness such a spectacle of nature. Keep up with our sightings at hawkcount.org- it’s amazing to watch as hawks move across the country!

Bird of the Day: Brown Booby (A tale of Two Boobies!)

Brown Booby, Sula leucogaster

Ah, boobies- so often the targets of birding innuendos, and so often the targets of far-flung chasing. Boobies are usually found in tropical waters far from most North American birders, and the Brown Booby is no exception. The Brown Booby is typically found by most birders in the Floridian Dry Tortugas, and even this is not an easy trip. Fortunately (for birders), recent hurricanes blew a juvenile Brown Booby into Summit County, Ohio, the last week of August. At the same time, I found out that another Brown Booby had been found in the New York Hudson Valley’s Ashokan Reservoir.

I received all of this information while I was house-sitting in Michigan, a state without any Brown Boobies to speak of. I had already seen my lifer Brown Booby in San Francisco, so I was a little hesitant to drive 12 hours round-trip to maybe see a bird in Ohio when I could play with Common Loons about ten minutes from me instead. But by the end of that week, I learned that I would be the new hawk watcher at Greenwich Audubon in Connecticut and I was soon back in my car embarking on my 15 hour drive back east. Earlier that morning, my friend in CT texted me a photo of the beautiful adult Brown Booby at the Ashokan, and I decided then that no matter how many more hours it added to my drive I was not going to be outdone.

Finding the Brown Booby in Ohio was ridiculously easy. The metro-park had wonderfully labeled parking lot signs that corresponded to eBird reports, and when I arrived at the correct lot it was obvious that the booby was close by. Dozens of people with masks, huge cameras, camo, and binoculars were all heading down a thin path into the trees by the water’s edge. It took about two minutes to reach the shoreline, and the Brown Booby was posing like a celebrity right above our heads. The hardest part of the whole venture was making sure not to step in poison ivy.

Ohio’s Brown Booby. Score!

The Ohio Brown Booby, as a juvenile, admittedly did not look as dapper as the one in the picture my friend texted me, but I was still smitten. It had a bill of washed out blue, and light orange webbed feet that looked like crepes wrapped around a branch. It was mostly still as I watched, occasionally twisting its head to look behind it. All of the people gathered were so considerate, and we all figured out how to move around and take turns getting the best looks so we could adhere to social distancing.

Thirty minutes late, I was back in the car and on my way to Connecticut. A few days later, I find out, to my horror, that I saw the Ohio Brown Booby only days before it was attacked and killed by (most likely) a Peregrine Falcon. Yikes.

Since the NY Brown Booby was still there the following Monday, I decided it was only fitting that I take this crazy opportunity to see two Brown Boobies hundreds of miles outside of their range in less than a week. A much shorter drive later, I said hello to the White Pelican (who has been at the Ashokan Reservoir for quite a while) before heading over to find the Brown Booby. I had seen some really great photos taken of it fishing, so I was hoping I would get to see it in action. Booby plunge-diving is amazing, and Brown Boobies expertly slice through the water by tucking in their wings and tail after diving out of the sky. However, since it was evening, the booby was instead perched on what looked like a yellow submarine with a group of Double-crested Cormorant. Not the greatest of views because of the lighting, but it was still amazing to see such a rare bird so close to where I grew up birding!

Adult Brown Booby at the Ashokan Reservoir with its Double-crested Cormorant friends

To commemorate seeing two Brown Boobies in a week, I made this Bird of the Day painting a combination of both experiences: an adult Brown Booby (from the Ashokan, but in non-breeding plumage) sits on a branch (as did the bird in Ohio) and looks up at its Double-crested Cormorant friends flying in ahead of, alas, a Peregrine Falcon. I like to think that this amalgamation of Brown Boobies will have a happy ending despite that little inclusion!

Raptor Roundup: Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

On September 2, I started my first ever official bird job as a hawk watcher! For the next three months I will be counting migrating raptors passing through Quaker Ridge. Quaker Ridge Hawk Watch is one of many official hawk watch areas that contribute valuable data to scientists worldwide. In 1972, it was determined that Quaker Ridge provided one of the best viewing sites of hawks in the state, and volunteers and paid hawkwatchers have manned the site during the fall ever since.

The first week of September has seen few migrating hawks, but this has provided an amazing opportunity to spend time watching local raptors. In particular, I have been able to spend ample amounts of time watching Turkey Vultures and Red-tailed Hawks. Since I have already spent hours and hours with vultures as a college student, I spent the last week really focusing on the hawks. The Red-tailed Hawk is a bird that I see so often perched by the side of the road or soaring above my car as I drive. It’s red tail is so wonderfully diagnostic that it is easy to forget to consider other traits that help classify it as a Red-tail. This week, considering that most of the hawks I watched were so far away they looked like black specks, I got to go through Red-tailed Hawk identification boot camp.

While the red tail is a fantastic ID tool, it is unfortunately not always visible. On top of that, Red-tailed Hawks exhibit remarkable plumage variation throughout the species. There are dark morphs, light morphs, juveniles…they are not as simple as they should be, even with that red tail! I have learned a few other ways to nail down this bird when it is a mere speck on the horizon:

1. Juvenile birds have fantastic panels of light through their primaries that show through their primary feathers. When compared to the light white crescents that show through the wings of a Red-shouldered hawk, these wing patches seem like windows. I love this tool.

2. Adult birds do not have the white windows, but they do have a dark trailing edge along their wings. (Broad-wingeds have this too, but they also have black and white banding in their tails that Red-tails do not)

3. They soar in wide circles (unlike Broad-winged Hawks that make tight circles) and have powerful, shallow wingbeats.

4. Red-tails have a “Charlie Brown shirt” band across their belly. I usually just hear this described as a belly band, but my friend recently told me his Charlie Brown reference and I think that it’s way more fun.

5. In flight, it will occasionally hover in place like a kestrel.

Of course, even with all of these things in mind, identifying hawks at a distance can still be tricky. I have been studying The Crossley Guide to Raptors by Richard Crossley as well Hawks at a Distance by Jerry Ligouri, which are both a wealth of knowledge on working through this group of birds. Red-tailed Hawk migration through Quaker Ridge is at its peak in the second part of October, so until then I will be spending most of my time with the “local Tails,” as I have heard them called. Broad-winged Hawks are supposed to start picking up en masse over the next week, so that is who I will be focusing on next!

The Messenger, 24x18, Watercolor, Ink, Gouache. 2016

Bird of the Day: Tufted Puffin

Tufted Puffin, Fratercula cirrhata

By an incredible stroke of good fortune, I have had the opportunity to visit Glacier Bay National Park three times in two years. Each was an experience beyond words, with stunning vistas of Southeast Alaskan mountains and fantastic views of truly wild creatures.

Unlike most national parks, the main attraction- the glaciers- are pretty much only accessible by boat. The first time I visited the park in late August of 2018, my girlfriend and I embarked on the National Park dayboat to reach the glaciers. The knowledgable naturalist helped point out wildlife and explain the history of the various glaciers as we traveled. The second time I went was in August of 2019. This time, I went with my friend Captain Billy of Wooshkeetan Tours out of Hoonah, AK and wow, David Attenborough could not have gotten better creature encounters. Orcas swam right under out boat, we crept up on a brown bear flipping rocks for clams, sea otters lazily floated right past the side of the boat…it was truly indescribable. By the time we got to the seabird nest rocks, I was utterly beside myself.

Brown Bear

Mountain Goat

Sea Otter

Orca

My biggest vanity point is my hair. It is short, and I love it when it is super bedraggled and tufty- the tuftier the better. So I have great respect for the Tufted Puffins, and was practically leaping off of the boat with excitement as we carefully approached the rocks where already, we could see hundreds of Black-legged Kittiwakes at their nests. Pelagic Cormorants, Pigeon Guillemots, and Common Murres also peppered the rocks. And then there, on a small ledge, was a group of six Tufted Puffins! Captain Billy skillfully moved the boat around the rocks so we could see their marvelous tufts from all angles.

The tufts of the Tufted Puffin show up alongside its bright red bill and red feet during the breeding season. Once summer ends, the tufts are actually moulted off. Tufted Puffins will make their nests by digging a shallow burrow or creating a nest within the crevice of rocky cliffs. Like many seabirds, they breed on isolated islands. Tufted Puffins range throughout the North Pacific Ocean, and are a familiar sight from both Pacific Northwest and Russian coasts. The Russians know the Tufted Puffin by the name toporok, which means “small axe.” Looking up at its big red bill, I could sort of see the resemblance, though to me it looked it is so big that it seems as much a small maul as a small axe!

Like many seabirds, Tufted Puffins are suffering from climate change. The winter of 2016-2017 saw a mass die-off of Tufted Puffins near St Paul island in Alaska. Including fly-bys, I only counted about 10 Tufted Puffins near these rocks in Glacier Bay. Just a year earlier, in 2019, there had been at least several dozen. While we were visiting the park a few weeks earlier in 2019 than we were in 2018, these numbers still do not reflect well on the well-being of the puffin population, especially considering seabird numbers have been falling dramatically.

Now that I no longer live in Hoonah, I do not know when I will return to Glacier Bay. I hope that I can get back there one day. It saddens me, though, to think that the next time I return, it will inevitably be very different. Whether the glacier is smaller or there are fewer seabirds, climate change is going to continue to irrevocably shape the park, and not necessarily for the better. In the meantime, I will hold close the memories of Glacier Bay’s wild creatures, and paint them as beautifully as a I can so that people might become inspired to help protect them.

Trip list:

Mammals: Steller’s Sea Lion, Orca, Humpback Whale, Sea Otter, Brown Bear, Sea Otter, Dall’s Porpoise, Harbor Seal

Birds: Black-legged Kittiwake, Pelagic Cormorant, Red-necked Phalarope, Glaucous-winged Gull, Mew Gull, Fork-tailed Storm-petrel, Bald Eagle, Common Raven, Black Oystercatcher, Surf Scoter, Kittlitz Murrelet, Marbled Murrelet, Common Loon, Red-throated Loon, Pigeon Guilemot, Tufted Puffin, Horned Puffin, Common Murre, Northwestern Crow, Great Blue Heron

Riverhawks

Common Nighthawk, Chordeiles minor

I learned to bird on the Hudson River. As a student at Bard College in the mid-Hudson Valley, I would wake up hours earlier than my peers, everyday, and spend my time before classes in the Tivoli Bays wetland right behind the college. Some of my closest friends became Great Blue Herons, Yellow Warblers, and Red-winged Blackbirds. No matter where I have traveled to since graduating, I feel myself called back to the Tivoli Bays when I need to feel that sense of familiarity, a sense of home.

This spring, for the first time in my entire life, I was unable to spend even a day of spring in New York. I was stuck in quarantine in Hoonah, Alaska, a place that is an entirely different world than that of the Hudson Valley. My annual pilgrimage to the Tivoli Bays during spring migration was impossible due to COVID-19, and the feeling of separation hurt. Time seemed to function differently this year- without spring migration in the Tivoli Bays, I could barely tell that it was spring at all, and then suddenly, it was summer, and now, it is almost fall. I had been seeing birds I normally see way earlier - American Goldfinch, blackbirds, Tufted Titmice, House Wrens- for the first time this year, and it felt wildly disorienting. Becoming a birder in New York had imprinted the migration patterns of the area into my being, and I have come to expect specific birds at specific times the same way in which I expect Valentine’s Day in February, Christmas in December. Seeing my first goldfinch in August made me feel as strange as though I were walking around with a Santa hat in June.

From the seat of a kayak, I floated along the Hudson River, breathing in the smell of marshy grasses and estuarine salt. Hearing the rustle of grasses in the Tivoli Bays felt like a soothing lullaby welcoming me home.

As the sky melted into the colors of a Hudson Valley Sunset, purple washed away the blue and thin rose light crept up above the mountains. There is nothing quite like a Hudson Valley sunset. The plants and shorebirds that dotted the river lost their color, becoming black silhouettes. Suddenly, a dark shape flew towards me, jerking upwards to avoid colliding with my head, and as I whipped around to watch the batlike shape I could see the white windows in the wings shining within the silhouette of a Common Nighthawk. It flew in front of the moon, creating an x-shape with its boomerang-like wings before veering off into the shadows. Looking around, I could count four nighthawks dipping and dancing as they feasted on insects above the river.

A Common Nighthawk perched at Magee Marsh during the Biggest Week in American Birding. It was incredible how well it blended in to its surroundings!

Common Nighthawks are members of the nightjar family caprimulgiformes (which is a really fun word to say!) Their wings are long and slender like a falcons, which they expertly deploy to twist and turn in the air like a bat while hunting insects in flight. Nightjars are nocturnal, and because of their excellent camouflage are almost impossible to see during the day while they rest completely still against tree limbs. Unlike most nightjars, nighthawks lack conspicuous rictal bristles on their face that are believed to possibly help with the capture of insects.

Common Nighthawks begin to migrate through the Hudson River at the end of August. Unlike every other bird, I was seeing them for the first time on-time. It made time feel right again, as though everything was on schedule after all, even though it had, of course, been on time all along. With all of the chaos and uncertainty in the human world, I felt grateful to the nighthawks for this moment of normalcy, and for what felt like a homecoming party.