While I was counting hawks in Panama in October, I was part of an event unprecedented in the history of the Semaphore Hill (Canopy Tower) hawk count. My season had started with a few very solid days of counting raptors, but by October 15th the season had lapsed into a very slow slog with just a trickle of bird every day for over a week. Sadly, I tend to attach my emotions to recent success while doing bird counts. I’m up on good days, down on bad days, and really struggle during prolonged slow periods. So, when the morning of the 15th began rainy and I was completely skunked for the entire morning for the first time that season I wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind. Shortly after noon the skies cleared and a few birds started to trickle by but at 2:00 pm I only had 304 birds and was beginning to evaluate the weather for the next day and was pondering shutting down the count at 3:00 and birding the entrance road.
While my focus was slipping, my eyes kept being drawn to two different rain clouds, one from the south and one from the west that were both approaching and threatening to merge. Migrating raptors attempt to avoid rain showers, often moving just ahead of bands of rain, and these bands were setting up perfectly to bring birds to the Tower if there were any birds in the area. So, when I spotted a large kettle on the western horizon moving toward me rapidly I was not completely surprised. This was a significant kettle, and upon first glance appeared to contain at least several thousand birds. I started pointing the kettle out to the other birders on the deck and gathering additional clickers to be ready for multiple species when one person asked “Did you see the other kettle?” I had not. Another boiling mass of raptors had popped up just behind the first one and was even larger than the first! I commented that it looked like I might be about to get screwed and several people laughed and said that I would be fine. Then someone walked to another vantage point and shouted back to me, “Yep, you are definitely going to get screwed!”. At this point, I had my clickers ready and was beginning to look at the first kettle, but my curiosity was piqued and I moved to gain a better view of the horizon. In the distance a dark cloud wall painted the sky an eerie slate gray as it dumped rain. This ominous cloud was crawling ever closer to Canopy Tower and crawling ahead of it were thousands upon thousands of little black dots, the contents of a hundred anthills dumped into the sky! It was nothing I’d ever seen before and I knew I was in fact royally screwed. I received a massive, instantaneous hit of adrenaline as well as equal feelings of exhilaration and pure fear!
The first kettle was already streaming past me and the second kettle hit shortly afterwards and thus began 1.5 hours of nonstop clicking! The people already on the deck rounded up all the other guests and soon there were about 20 birders taking in the spectacle as well as most of the staff of Canopy Tower, and about 15 Panamanian business men, friends of Canopy Tower’s owner Raúl Arias de Para, who just happened to be visiting when the big one hit! Cell phones were out everywhere recording the sight and exclamations about how this was the most amazing sight the person had every seen, how amazing it was, how impressive were flying almost as thick as the birds in both English and Spanish.
I was largely unaware of the audience and was operating on a potent mixture of adrenaline and terror! The twin storms were steadily approaching and were pushing birds ahead of them faster than these raptors typically move. They were stacked up like I had never seen before, some barely above the ground while others were spiraling up and disappearing into the clouds high above me, all while they were streaming east as quickly as possible, staying ahead of the rain. It was absolute madness and not just for a few moments, but birds kept coming and I just kept clicking as fast as I could. The speed that these birds where streaming by plus the sheer volume of birds made it necessary for me to click by 100’s, mentally blocking off roughly 100 birds and then clicking the clicker once to represent that block of 100. I was doing that as fast as I could for over an hour. The overwhelming majority of the birds were Broad-winged Hawks fortunately (they are distinctive and fairly easy to count), though there was a fair number of Turkey Vultures (even more distinctive and easy to count) as well. I had a Broad-wing 100x clicker in my right hand and I was essentially clicking it nonstop and a vulture 100x clicker in my left hand and was clicking that every few seconds. I was having to mentally keep track of the small number of Swainson’s Hawks and write them down when I had time. Raptors were suddenly moving on the opposite side of Canopy Tower and I had to quickly recruit Tiffany Kersten, who was leading one of the groups of birders at the Tower, to count the north side for me. I had as much as I could deal with and more just counting one side of the Tower! The degree to which I was trying my absolute best to stay as caught up as possible and just keep going minute-to-minute is beyond my ability to articulate. All the while I was both having the time of my life and also barely keeping sheer panic in check. There is no other word description than absolute madness.
Everything ends eventually, and after an hour of insanity the rain to the south finally blocked out the southern side of the Tower and I got caught up. The flight did not stop though, raptors were continuing to stream east as quickly as possible, but instead of being all around me the lines were moving farther and farther north. A steady drizzle had enveloped Tower and all the other observers had opted for drier digs when the last thin line of birds I was counting at the limits of my scope winked out. Moments later a combination of rain and the gathering darkness ended the count. All the adrenaline that had been sustaining me just evaporated and I came out this state of hyper focus. The suite of tropical songbirds that are typically to be heard around the Tower had followed the example of the birders and sought shelter. I stood alone listening to the quiet dripping of rain all around.
My day was far from finished though. I had to take the hurried scribbles I had made during the height of the flight, add them up, and discover what number I had put to a migratory movement of birds that defied something as sterile and lifeless as a mere number. As I moved to do so I was in this state of shock, amazement, and exhilaration as I mentally played back the incredible scenes I had just witnessed. Rapidly though, those feelings were swallowed up by this odd sense of numbness. After counting large or challenging flights of birds I have felt extreme mental and physical exhaustion before, but this was far beyond that. I have theories on why I felt this way, but no real answers. Unlike the adrenaline that faded as soon as I stopped counting this odd numbness dissipated extraordinarily slowly- I didn’t feel right for several days, and even several weeks later I felt a bit off.
Still, when I finally got the flight tabulated the number was more than enough to shake me out of my stupor. I ended the day with 345,681 raptors. For a reminder, I started the 2 o’clock hour with 304 birds for the day! The 2-3 PM hour was 337,172 birds, 323,740 Broad-wings, 12620 Turkey Vultures, 810 Swainson’s Hawks, 1 Merlin, 1 Peregrine, and one spectacle that I will remember forever. Even the photos do not even come close to conveying what birds in those numbers compressed into a single hour looks like or what it feels like to experience such a phenomenon. Special events tend to happen in special places and Canopy Tower is certainly a special place. I ended the season with 655,000 birds, by far the new record for this location, 200 hours of observation, but nearly 350,000 came in an hour and half. I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have found myself at the intersection of a special place, ideal weather, and the right timing to not only see such a humbling event but in the smallest way to have the opportunity to document it.
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