By TOM ANGLEBERGER
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Hanging Rock (Sept. 24) — Even after driving up to the crest of Peters Mountain, just over the West Virginia line, there’s still a mile to go on a foot trail before the binocular-lugging hawk watcher reaches the Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory.

Perched on a rock outcropping, the little building with a wraparound deck offers a 360-degree view of paradise. It’s a front row seat for the annual hawk migration.

“This is the best spot,” says John Lynham, who drove up from Greensboro, N.C. Every year it’s like a reunion, he said, because diehard hawk watchers like himself come back every September to see hundreds, if not thousands, of hawks.

There are other mountaintops where you can watch hawks, he says, but “you don’t get the view, and you don’t get the perspective that you get from up here.”

To the east are Virginia’s long, loping mountains. To the west are West Virginia’s rugged, serrated ridges. A sea of fog is burying some folks today, but the dozen or so hawk watchers are high above it.

Today, they’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the annual hawk migration.

“Down low, eye level!” someone may call. Or, “I have three up, two down.”

The watchers — who include a commercial real estate agent, a retiree or two, a political activist and two hooky-playing Virginia Tech grad students — will see about 200 in the course of the day.

One in particular will stand out.

Someone called it from a distance — a hawk coming in for the owl! The poor, old, shaky, one-eyed plastic owl is stuck atop a stick for just this purpose. Hawks hate owls, even plastic ones. Occasionally, a hawk will spot it and attack.

The hawk grows bigger and bigger. It’s really fast.

Closing in on the owl, it throws its talons out for a fight, but shoots past, wheels gracefully — just yards away from the hawk watchers — and flies on.

“Some of ’em has hit it,” says George Pence, a West Virginian who is the unofficial historian of observatory lore.

Of course, not all the hawks make close-up appearances. Some pass over the valley at a respectful distance, some fly overhead with the sun shining through their feathers, others are just dots in the distance. Different types of raptors come through on different days. This bright September day brings mostly broad-winged hawks. Late September is also the peak for several other types of hawks, bald eagles and ospreys. Golden eagles tend to peak in mid-October, although Veterans Day is also supposed to be a good day to see one.

Today, Duane Fillingame is the official counter, clicking each bird on a hand counter then entering the numbers in a log. He’s on vacation from his job as a computer programmer in Roanoke. This will be his last day after a solid week of watching.

“We got over 200,” he says a little before 3 p.m. “Got 46 in this hour.”

It averages out to about one hawk every two minutes, but because the birds travel in clusters there are occasional lulls, often filled with bird talk — yesterday’s hawk count, well over 500, is a juicy topic.

The data these amateurs collect isn't completely scientific, but that doesn't mean it's not useful, said Virginia Tech ornithologist Jerry Via. With data going back for decades, the hawk counts can give a look at the "big picture," he said.

"Over time it does show . . . some very interesting trends," said Via. For example, he said, the counts show increases in bald eagle and osprey populations along the East Coast.

It’s not uncommon to see a number of hawks slowly spiraling upward on thermal air currents. The hawk watchers call this a kettle.

“They circle around in that thermal,” explains watcher Mark Morgan. “That gets them higher and higher and higher. Once it gets ’em so high, they just take off.”

The principle is so sound that a flock of glider planes is observed kettling during the afternoon, their metallic wings flashing in the sunlight.

A five- or six-bird kettle is fairly common, a 25-bird kettle is eye-opening and a giant swirling storm of several hundred becomes a legend that gets discussed for years.

Cindy Davis, a 21-year veteran of the hawk watch, sees a group of birds in the far distance, and counts them off up to 20.

“Nice kettle,” she says, “nice kettle.”

There’s a pleasure to being the first to spot a bird, although there’s also the danger of having it turn out to be a buzzard. But the veteran watchers like Davis rarely seem to make those mistakes. They can identify the birds from absurd distances. The shape, the position of the wings, the behavior all clue them in.

There’s the constant hope of seeing a bald eagle. (Pence will gladly tell you about the time 15 flew by in one day.)

If an eagle does come by, says Fillingame, “this whole mountain will tilt over as everybody goes over to one side” to get a look.

At one point a likely candidate is spotted, a long way off. But it turns out to be an osprey. Not a bad bird at all, but not an eagle.

No matter. Binoculars turn north again, waiting to see what the next bird will be. Some of them call it an addiction. An unbreakable one, or at least one that nobody wants to break — not on a fine clear day atop Peters Mountain when a kettle or an eagle could be coming along any minute.

“Eternal hope,” said Davis, “eternal optimism.”

On the Web: www.hangingrocktower.org