The Hawk Watchers of Montclair

You no doubt have seen views of Manhattan from Eagle Rock Reservation. And you've seen hawks, even if you couldn't tell a kite from a sharpie. But if you haven't climbed the incredibly steep, narrow stairs to the Montclair Hawk Watch on Edgecliff Road and stepped onto a ledge that feels worthy of receiving the Ten Commandments, you haven't really seen the views and the hawks that Montclair has to offer.

Annette went back in 2006. Fran and I went yesterday. Although the sky was a piercing blue it seemed to the sky experts we encountered a little hazy. The clouds, though, were good, as Hawk Watch coordinator Else Greenstone pointed out. It makes it easier to spot the birds.

Else has been climbing to this ledge, now leveled and paved with gravel, for 29 years. When she first started, there were no steps, just rocks, and the path was called The Devil's Slide. "These magnificent stairs were put in in 1985," she says. The watch, which is operated by the NJ Audubon Society, is both a place and a season. In its 53rd year, it's the second oldest continuously operating hawk watch in the country. For three months every year, Sept. 1 through Nov. 30, Else and other bird watchers ascend to the platform with binoculars and high-powered telescopes and spend their days counting the hawks that fly overhead.

They shout to each other like sentinels spotting approaching aircraft -- "Coming in!" "Red tail, going away" "There's a sharpie" -- identifying the different species not just by size and wing shape but by their movements. Steve Byland, a nature photographer responsible for the stunning closeup of the hawk in the slideshow below, pointed out a vulture rocking back and forth as it flew. A bald eagle, by contrast, is a much denser bird and doesn't rock, he explained. Or as Else puts it, it's like "seeing your friends down the street." Even before you see their faces, you recognize them by how they move.

Many of the hawk watchers show up daily. Some travel far. Intern Adam Sabatine, 24, who's responsible for accurately recording each day's bird tallies, as well as names of visitors, drives from Pennsylvania. Byland, who lives in Warren, comes whenever the weather's good.

Else, 62, lives in Cranford, and is so dedicated that she showed up yesterday even though she'd had eye surgery in the morning. "It's hard to keep me off this hill," she says. Though she uses a cane, she cheerfully descended the stairs at the end of our visit in order to block our view of the steep decline; that's the best way to deal with Montclair Bird Watch acrophobia: "Just having someone in front makes a difference." One day, she says, she went up and down the stairs 17 times.

The numbers have been good lately. There were five bald eagles on Monday -- more than showed up in whole seasons in some previous years. On Monday, the volunteers high above Montclair counted 1,730 broad winged hawks; yesterday 1,206. "There was one day we had over 10,000 hawks," Else says. Which day? "September 21, 1981," comes the immediate answer. "You don't forget those days."

Else and Byland, and several others of yesterday's watchers, were on the hill the day the towers fell. "It sucked. It was just horrible," says Byland. "No phone. We didn't have radio. We didn't know what was going on." And then, out of nowhere, military jets zoomed into the airspace "so low they just shook the platform." They saw the towers fall through high-powered telescopes. The smoke lasted two months.

Ascending the final ladder and then climbing to the Montclair Hawk Watch platform is a radical experience, at least the first time. You feel you have discovered the sky and, into the bargain, a quirky little secret society dressed in ornithological t-shirts and funny hats. It's a little like finding yourself in another state. Colorado, maybe.

If you go, be sure to wear sensible shoes and bring binoculars if you have them. And if going back down fills you with trepidation, no fear. Else will lead the way.

See more of Byland's stunning bird photographs here. Other photographs by Fran Liscio. More information about the Montclair Hawk Watch, including directions (it's just a little down the road from Mills Reservation), on the NJ Audubon website.