Bedford Audubon Society

The Journey—
The Story of a Sharp-shinned Hawk
By John Askildsen

Imagine that you are a young Sharp-shinned Hawk, Accipiter striatus, living in the wet, moss laden coniferous spruce forests of the Rangeley Lakes region of western Maine. Born in early June of this year, and fledging from the nest in July, you are now a fully-grown, Blue Jay sized “Sharpie.” Some call you “the little tiger of the north woods.” You leave the nest and are thrust into a strange and somewhat unforgiving environment. You instinctively go out and catch small birds of the forest for nourishment. After sampling the avian fare of your woods, you have found that you have a sweet tooth for Red-breasted Nuthatches! You must do well the critical first months of life, but unfortunately your two nestmates do not. Your brother was taken by the much larger Northern Goshawk, and your sister flew into her reflection in a plate glass window of a nearby house. The odds are stacked heavily against you living through your first six months of life. The next three weeks will be your biggest challenge.

By the end of August, you are itching to move on to greener pastures. It’s now early September. For some reason, beyond your limits of understanding, you leave your familiar forest and head south. Your destination, unknown to you at this time, is the Gulf Coast woodlands of Mississippi.

You work your way down the evergreen ridges of New Hampshire and into Chester, Vermont where you overnight in a dense clump of red cedars on the edge of a fallow hay field. In the morning, after a quick Junco snack, you take flight. You fly down the woodland ridges of white pine, oak, and maple and over the farmlands of southern New England and New York State. As you course over the treetops, Blue Jays scream with alarm calls at the mere sight of you, and smaller birds freeze so as to go unnoticed. Food is not on your mind right now, migration is. You overnight in Pound Ridge, New York where you have found a large spruce tree behind an old white barn. The nearby farmhouse has a very active and well-stocked birdfeeder. You look for your favorite fare, the Red-breasted Nuthatch this morning, but you wind up dining on what’s available. An unsuspecting and diseased House Finch that has one eye closed up. You take advantage of the House Finch’s handicap. It’s nature’s way of letting only the strong and healthy survive. House Finch is a little chewy, but O.K. for fast food.

You’re on the road again, winging your way south, you avoid Long Island Sound. You don’t like crossing large bodies of water. One half hour later, in the distance and to your left, you see a huge concrete megalopolis, like you’ve never seen before. You thought Nashua, New Hampshire was a big town! You avoid New York City at all costs. Ahead of you is a very wide river, the Hudson. You cross over with little effort and in short order you arrive over New Jersey’s Atlantic Highlands. In the distance you see a thin strip of land called Sandy Hook, and beyond it you see something that gives you pause. A continuous ribbon of golden sand and beyond it, a big blue abyss! You think that going out there is not safe and you fight like the mad against a terrific northwest wind all day to keep away from “Big Blue.” You follow that ribbon of sand all day. You overnight in Tom’s River, New Jersey, and a cold, wet storm front blows through from the north just before dawn. You take an hour or two to dry off, forfeit breakfast in the interest of time and take off. Following the beach and fighting a terrific northwest gale, you put every ounce of energy into fighting the wind to stay over the land. If you fail, you will perish, drowning out at sea to the bluefish’s delight.

Ahead of you, you observe that the beach takes a funny turn near a tan and red lighthouse. In fact, it heads north again! “This can’t be!” you think. “What am I going to do now? I can’t turn headfirst into this northwest gale, I’ll surely blow out to sea! If you fail to maintain your position over land, you’ll be bluefish chum for sure!” Before you complete this thought, you hear a whooshing sound from behind. You turn to look. You see an imposing dark gray and white mass, and two cold dark eyes fixed upon you. What ever it is, it’s headed directly at you at lightning speed, talons extended. You instinctively roll into a vertical dive, tuck in your head and crash through the woodland canopy. You just missed being a female Peregrine’s late afternoon snack. She’s angry that she missed you by mere inches! She’s flown all the way from Greenland in just a week’s time and she’s very hungry. With the Peregrine’s power and aeronautic abilities, she burns calories like the space shuttle burns fuel! She needs to take in sustenance to continue on her long journey to Jamaica, where she will winter. With grace, skill, and ease, she catches her prey in mid air, severs its spinal cord, plucks and devours it all while on the wing. She’s a powerful bird, and she takes full advantage of her abilities. She’s an airborne great white shark.

You’re still alive, back up in the sky and in one piece. When you crashed through the canopy, you could have easily broken your neck by simply hitting one big tree limb. But you, like your sister hitting the window in Maine, are too young and inexperienced to know this. You will be part of the statistical 20 percent of your species that makes it through its first year of life.

You glance down below at this peculiar point of land jutting out into “big blue.” Hungry, tired, and stressed, you dive down and find an inviting holly tree in the backyard of the Cape May Bird Observatory. There is a birdfeeder here. Warblers flit about all around you. They take advantage of the dense, vine entangled cedar, beach plum, bayberry, and live oak. Through your fiery and starved eyes, warblers look like little cocktail franks dancing on beach plum branches. You’re too tired to hunt this evening. You decide that you will stay here a few days given the strong winds, the fact you are surrounded by “big blue,” and the abundance of food here. You figure you might as well rest up for a while, and maybe hunt up one of those tasty little Red-breasted Nuthatches, here in Old Cape May.

Photos Courtesy of and Copyright © by Arlene Ripley

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