Birding news and notes North Jersey

[Donna]

Where's the best hawk watch in North Jersey?

For those who love to watch raptors glide past during the fall migration, the typical answer is one of the major lookouts — Montclair or State Line.

For Steve and Linda Quinn of Ridgefield Park, the answer is a lot closer to home: in their own yard.

On Saturday, for the 14th year in a row, the Quinns are inviting a few dozen friends to their place for a picnic and several hours of hawk-watching.

They have discovered something that goes right over the heads of most of us: You don't necessarily have to go to a mountain ridge or a rock outcropping to watch the fall raptor migration.

One year, the hawk-eyed Quinns and Co. counted more than a thousand raptors, including several hundred broad-winged hawks, five bald eagles and two types of falcon — peregrine and merlin — during their annual event. (On their slowest day, they tallied just four, but what a quartet they were: bald eagle, osprey, peregrine falcon and sharp-shinned hawk.)

It helps to time the picnic right.

"I have always tried to go hawk-watching as close to Sept. 17 as I can," says Steve Quinn, an artist who designs exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. "To me, that seems to be the magic date when broad-winged hawks come through in the greatest numbers. You're likely to get birds like bald eagles and ospreys as well."

The Quinns have seen other "good birds" while looking for hawks — a pair of ruddy ducks, a ruby-throated hummingbird, a scarlet tanager, a rose-breasted grosbeak and a flight of 30 nighthawks one dusk.

The Quinns' location helps, too. "We have just a small window of sky directly overhead, but Ridgefield Park is uniquely situated on the peninsula between Overpeck Creek and the Hackensack River," says Steve. "We get birds flying south from the Palisades that head down the Overpeck on their way through the Meadowlands."

Although the Quinns' place is a great spot to watch raptors, Steve says that anyone looking up near that magical date of Sept. 17 — Friday — will have a very good chance of seeing birds go over as long as winds are out of the northwest. The birds may be flying high, but you should still be able to see them.

One of the Quinns' goals for their annual hawk watch, aside from socializing with friends and neighbors, is to raise people's awareness of the natural world.

"We are so cut off and separated from nature, yet it is all around us," says Steve. "We're no different from any other creature on Earth, but yet with our architecture, our culture, daily lives, it's hard for us to imagine. This is one way to reconnect us."

According to Steve, the keys to backyard hawking are patience, an eye for detail and experience.

"There's no substitute for experience when it comes to learning silhouettes and the nuances of different species," he says. (A helpful free hawk ID guide can be found at battaly.com/nehw/carrier_guide.htm.)

One other factor: Clouds are helpful because seeing hawks is easier when they are silhouetted against the white.

But raptor watching isn't all ice cream and eagles. "The worst part of being a hawk watcher is probably the same as being a warbler watcher. You can get a terrible neck ache by the end of the day," Steve says.

"If we find the birds are still coming over in numbers after our picnic dinner, we throw blankets out in the back yard, and everyone just lies flat with their binoculars and looks straight up." (There ya go MAK) 

[MAK]

    Thanks Donna!  That would be ideal until I have to get up!!!