by Denny Olson
As with most good things in life, it starts with getting up. Early. Lunch for the day, raingear, extra layers of clothing to adjust to the autumn temperature swings at high elevation, extra drinking water, bear spray, binoculars, foam sit pad, first aid kit, sunscreen and hat, hiking poles, multi-tool and headlamp (just in case) – check, check, check …
Then there’s the drive — 45 minutes, half of it uphill through the deer and grouse slalom on what marginally passes for a road, to the parking area at aptly named Camp Misery. Another day begins at Jewel Basin Hawk Watch (JBHW). Steller’s Jays, Lincoln’s and White-crowned Sparrows escort me up the myriad twists and turns of a four-wheeler path that eventually flattens and opens on a brushy slope into the entirety of where I get to live. The whole Flathead Valley presents itself as an expanse of lakes, farmland and subdivisions. Solitaires dance from snag to snag adding foreground interest. I pause and take a breath or two, once again grateful for my good fortune.
The mini-road shrinks to single track trail, switches back seven times up the slope of Mount Aeneas – the third one never seems to end, but I notice that pauses to huff and puff are getting less frequent this time of the year. Despite my advanced state of decay, I’m in better shape now.
At the top, with the summit to the right, it’s time to head north and traverse the steep exposure over Picnic Lakes far below. A quarter-mile of tight-rope ridge, and I’m there – on top of the hawk-watcher’s world, hoping to share this space with hawks, eagles and falcons on a mission. After the morning hunt, they are ready to tack into the southwest wind, mostly motionless, and well over the speed limit. There is nothing remotely like watching a Golden Eagle from above, focused on the south, at a hundred miles per hour.
Every day here is about anticipation. Will the clouds lift? Will the wind switch to favorable? Will this be one of “those” days? Recent years have had a day of nearly 600 raptors fly by, and a couple of others nearly 500. How many Sharpies and Coopers will take a run at the owl decoy? Will another Goshawk take out the decoy’s other eye? Dan Casey, the founder of JBHW, and another watcher, were once standing on the ridge facing south about five feet apart and had a Peregrine Falcon fly, from behind, between them at waist height. Knowing how fast Peregrines can fly, it was probably ahead of its sound. This is a peek into the world of birds usually available only to them – in the endless world of air. For us landlubbers, hair regularly stands on end. This is the home of “wow”.
Ostensibly, we are here to gather data, get some idea of population and migration trends, and to quantify. But after we have done it just once, we realize that the science is just our excuse to be here, to sit quietly in the middle of a world normally available only to birds for the last hundred million years. For them, that’s a lot of practice. And it shows.
Etched on my addled brain is the neon rust color of a Swainson’s Hawk juvenile directly overhead in the sunlight, a Peregrine hugging the terrain under the radar straight at my open mouth, Prairie Falcons flashing their dark armpits overhead, and all the tiny dots in my binoculars to the north morphing into apparitions, and then into a species of raptor. Author Loren Eiseley once said, “If there is magic in the world, it is found in water.” It’s true, but we “Jewelers” know that it is — most assuredly — also in the air.