Last Friday, I finally chased that first-in-the-state Ferruginous Hawk down in Chatham. Though it had been hanging out fifteen minutes from my house for a few days, this was the first opportunity I had without annoying obligations such as work and family and even Christmas Bird Counts keeping me from this premium bird. Many hopeful birders joined me at Morris Island that morning, with experienced, well-binoculared eyes stationed at every possible vantage point from sunrise onwards. There was talk that the hawk had been seen flying along the north edge of the island early, so our hearts were hopeful. Ultimately, I had a different raptor encounter than the one I hoped for, but it was one I’ll always cherish.
As we all searched for the Ferruginous Hawk, heads whipped around whenever a big bird entered the highly sensitive peripheral vision fields of all these amped up bird brains – invariably they turned out to be Great Black-backed or Herring Gulls. The wind off the sound, frigid and gusting around 40, whipped the sand off the flats and blasted shoes and ankles. Birders periodically braved these winds in the open dunes and flats with the most panoramic viewing opportunities but retreated to a sheltered low spot in the trail to recover and chat with others every 15 minutes or so.
I heard that others had seen several Piping Plovers, very unusual for January, so I trudged out to the flats for a look. I found four of them feeding with two Semipalmated Plovers, also too far north for the date, and snapped some photos, risking the loss of several digits in the cold whenever I took my mittens off. After a few minutes the plovers stopped feeding and roosted, taking advantage of some micro-topographic feature on the flats to avoid the blowing sand, and I went back to scanning for the hawk. Suddenly a big bird rocketed into view – a Peregrine Falcon, death missile of the tidal flats, no doubt hunting the shorebirds.
Sure enough, it had some hapless victim in its talons. The falcon wheeled around to make a controlled landing into the wind. I snapped some distant photos as it landed on the ruins of some former tree washed way out onto the flats – an entire woodland was eroded from the southern uplands of Morris Island in recent years, the skeletons of pines and highbush blueberries now litter the vast tidal flats. After a minute, the peregrine moved to a perch much closer to me to continue its meal, and I was able to ever-so-slowly sidle in for most intimate experience I’ve ever had with a peregrine, always one of my favorite creatures, and now my six-year-old son’s favorite bird. Eventually it finished off the shorebird, leaving no trace I could find, cleaned its bill, had a poop, and left.
I got some great photos of that peregrine, my best ever, all earned in the punishing wind on those exposed flats. Importantly, especially for my story arc here, the photos showed black and green stainless steel leg bands, likely placed by researchers when this bird was a chick, with the code 09 CB. I emailed the photos to state ornithologist Drew Vitz, and was tickled to learn a few days later that this peregrine and I had something in common. Though Peregrine Falcons nest all over the world – I’ve seen them on at least three continents - this bird that found me on the Monomoy flats that day was born in Brockton, like me, at a nest site atop a Verizon cell tower downtown. Peregrines didn’t start nesting in Brockton until well after I had fledged the nest myself – the six-year-old birder kid me would have been floored to see them in Brockton, but their population recovery from DDT poisoning had just started in the 80s, so there weren’t any. There are now close to 50 nesting pairs in the state.
None of us saw the famous Ferruginous Hawk that day, and it hasn’t been seen since. But I’m content with my raptor encounter, with this hometown falcon coming to let that 6-year-old birder kid from Brockton know that Peregrine Falcons are doing just fine.
