Category Archives: Essay

Familiars

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Submitted eBird checklist (left) and screen-clip of the most recent Hawk Watch survey table (right)

A Red-Tailed Hawk swooped down through the trees, alighting a branch to watch students. I was there, too- walking through Hort Woods after lunch with my colleagues. It’s been a while since I saw a hawk on campus, and years since I’ve been near to my favorite bird.

In parts of medieval folklore, witches had something called a familiar– a supernatural creature meant to guide them through their use of magic. Red-Tailed Hawks are my familiar, always appearing at unusual moments to call my attention to the world around me. When I was fifteen, I had a close call with a Red-Tailed Hawk while refilling the feeders in my parents’ yard during my morning chores. While shimmying the barrel of a feeder up its string, a soft whump sounded from behind me. A chill crept up my neck as I turned- I’m terrified of bears- only to find a Red-Tailed Hawk deep in the snow. She had most likely seen prey in the yard and dived for it, not minding the awkward teen bumbling about the yard in her snowsuit.

This type of experience has been repeated… once, when I was nineteen, I spotted a hurt Red-Tail alongside the road and called it in to the Game Commission. I waited there, directing travelers until PGC came to pick up the bird. Again: at twenty-six I was talking on the phone in the courtyard when a Red-Tail decided to take a seat on the brick wall nearby with its lunch.

Fear is not a part of a Red-Tailed Hawk’s vocabulary. When mated, Red-Tails will guard their territory together from other Red-Tails and predators. If a human strays too close to their nest, a Red-Tail will take no qualm in attempting to scare them away. I ‘ve seen hawks diving cross-traffic to hit prey in a grassy median. Along I-99, they perch on the fencing while PennDOT rumbles by in the mowers.  

The two Red-Tails I see on my daily commute are road warriors. The hills between Bellefonte and State College are perfect hunting grounds. A huge swath passes through SCI Rockview and Penn State research farms. The regularly cultivated fields help form thermals necessary for hawks to travel. Plus, there’s a sprinkling of Wildlife Management Units, permitting nature to live unimpeded.

The intersection of human beings and wild raptors is increasingly in favor of human beings- but there are people trying to change the outcome. I recently learned about the Tussey Mountain Spring Hawkwatch, which has spotted 97 Red-Tails during 227 hours of watching. Programs like these provides important data used to build population and migration models. Simply watching and noting where and when we are seeing Red-Tails, we are contributing to the body of knowledge that is trying to provide a better understanding of our wild neighbors.

I noted my on-campus Red-Tail in eBird, briefly delaying our march back to the office. However, as soon as it was spotted, the hawk was gone, too quick for a photograph. I explained to them the importance of my stop and showed them my app- and continued our walk, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The moment was extraordinary for me, as my familiar crossed my path and instructed me to pay attention.

Finding Geocaching (Again)

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As Winter fades, I find myself experiencing a sudden-onset, Spring-induced feeling of restlessness. In years past, I denied myself the possibility of doing something after a long winter. This year, the feeling has been overwhelming and impossible to control. I wanted to be outside and have a little bit of fun, something local, something cheap. After Punxsutawney Phil declared an early Spring, I started looking for that something- and found myself at the doorway of a new hobby: geocaching.

I’m not actually a stranger to geocaching. I started in early 2016 after finding a cache while on a college-era lunch walk. I would look for a cache once a year for the next eight years. The knowledge of geocaching deep in the recesses of my mind, but it never occurred to me to try geocaching as a regular hobby until Instagram recommended @hullsome_geocaching to me.

I was fascinated by his videos. From them, I learned that geocaching combines a couple of things I like- being outside, puzzles, and exploring. There is also a bit of secrecy; you’re not supposed to be noticed by the public while geocaching. After I had watched every video, I resurrected my official Geocaching.com account, re-downloaded the app, and investigated the map to see what caches were near me.

There are hundreds of caches in my county, and thousands in Pennsylvania. Each dot on the map represents a little, fun adventure. Most of them also represent something unique to learn around me- lots of them are at interesting historical locations, geological formations, and beautiful outlooks. The vast majority, as I have learned, are intended to introduce the finder to a bigger adventure. With a bit of creativity, I can look for caches anywhere in the world completely for free. All I need to do is to pack a little bag, jump in my Jeep, and take off.

Right now, I’m working on the Happy Valley Geotour. Wednesday’s trip took me to the Bald Eagle State Park Overlook, and I spent my lunch break admiring the views. I also took a mowed path to the edge of the lakebed, and explored what I could in my remaining ten minutes. While I ended up being covered in mud, it was worth it. The restlessness was satisfied for the day, and on the way home, I was already planning my next adventure.

Forgotten Feathers

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It’s been a few months since I’ve been able to take a lunch walk. A proper one, not a stroll around campus or dash to my grandmother’s house, but the one-mile out-and-back to the Winter Launch, complete with a foray on the gravel shore of the lake. I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Wednesday had a high of 46 degrees, a sun shining over my head, and clear blue skies. A small NE wind may have cut through the kerchief tied around my neck, but it also carried the sound of two woodpeckers to my ears.

I arrived at the Winter Launch just in time to witness a small group of waterfowl land by a gravel bed- a mostly white bird and two mostly grey birds. I snapped a picture with my phone to try and identify them later. While walking out to the point, I kept watching the birds and thinking about what they were. The name came to me in a flash: common merganser.

The mostly white bird was obviously the male, and the darker pair female. When in air, the male had dark points with a bright body and the two females were dark all over except for their bellies, white as snow. Another trio landed further on the water, too far for my phone’s camera. While the wind pulled at my coat, I tried to study the pictures on my phone. The birds had already disappeared behind the gravel bank, leaving me to wonder what they could have been.

My inner naturalist quailed: They’re mergansers! You know they are! You’ve seen them before! My logical self did not agree- I couldn’t recall when I saw them last. I couldn’t recall what my bird book said about their migration or wintering territory. I couldn’t even think about what a merganser sounded like. I felt conflicted, and frustrated. Staring out at the water, I searched my memory for information on mergansers. I couldn’t even draw up a picture of a hooded merganser- one of my favorite waterfowl- in my mind’s eye. A sharp pang arose in my heart; I’ve found yet another thing my last concussion stole from me.

Nearly three years ago, I hit my head at work. While fixing some recycling, I startled myself and stood up, smacking my left temple off the corner of a wall-mounted lock-box. I don’t remember much from that day, except being at home, wearing sunglasses. Everything was too bright. When my mother arrived to take me to the hospital, I was sitting on the ottoman in my living room, shrouded by darkness. There was the weak, filtered light of the streetlights. I don’t remember the time I had off afterwards. I barely remember my birthday, which was a week later.

I went back to the doctor many times. I struggled with tinnitus and bright lights for months. Instructions given to me would disappear from my mind. On my lunch walks at work, I couldn’t recall the names of the flowers at the Arboretum. Then, I brushed it off. I was never much into flowers, I just liked taking their pictures. When I mentioned it to the doctor, she said there was a reason: post-concussion syndrome.

Since then, I’ve come to learn that I have huge gaps in my memory- mostly from the few years immediately prior to my concussion. While that meant forgetting most of what the COVID-19 shutdown was like, it also meant losing my most precious possession: my knowledge of nature. I struggled to identify the minerals on my bookshelf, the names of the geological epochs, and the paths to fossil beds at the park. Stubborn, I slowly started reeducating myself with the books and notes I kept from college. I regained what I knew I lost, but I was always learning I had forgotten something else.

Prior to all of this, knowing what bird was before me was an instinctual thing. Any kind of bird appearing in Central Pennsylvania was etched into the framework of my childhood. Battered bird books were scattered throughout my parents’ and grandparents’ houses. My father painstakingly taught us the difference between Purple Martins and Tree Swallows, and why we brought out the big gourds each year. He would point out robins and bluebirds, helping us build bird boxes and keeping them clean. He taught me what bird seed to put out and when. I learned to get up in the morning and watch the birds come in to the feeders while sipping my morning tea.

So, to have this moment, this doubt in my own knowledge, was heartbreaking. My phone was now dead, and I slowly walked home, mulling the birds’ identity in my mind. I had to get online as soon as possible and check my identification, then check my bird book. Absorbed in my thoughts, I almost crashed into my neighbor, who broke me from my reverie and brought me back to Earth. As we finished speaking, a blue speck flitted in the corner of my vision: an Eastern Bluebird perched on the telephone wire.

In one blink I knew its features, its face, its song. My inner naturalist rose again, smug as ever: You know I’m right. You saw a common merganser. I hurried the rest of the way home, skipping a bite to eat and plunging into the Merlin app to check my hypothesis… and I was right. I had seen six Common Mergansers on my walk. I hadn’t forgotten the birds after all.