It was a good day for birding at the refuge. We had arrived late in the afternoon, with the low sun lengthening shadows and showing off the fields’ rich texture of winter grasses and weeds, including Queen Anne’s lace, fuzzy seed heads of aster and goldenrod, spiky teasel seed heads, milkweed with its empty gray pods, dogbanes’ reddish fingerlike pods, and the brown spikes and dry fruit of peppermint and penstemon, among many other plants that feed overwintering small birds and mammals here. My son and I felt a bit “out of our league” as we approached a phalanx of birders standing by their cars, and equipped with spotting scopes mounted on tripods. Though we might have joined their informal group, and received instruction from them, as I have done before, sneaking a peak through one of their scopes at a perching rough-legged hawk, say, or a flock of redpolls (small northern finches with crimson caps that have invaded our region this winter), we chose instead to just use our own eyes and our binoculars. We admired the dancing, fluttering flight of short-eared owls. They flapped their wings almost like moths, and were as silent. One pair of long-winged, buff-colored birds gave us satisfying looks at their distinctive owl faces, and performed a kind of aerial ballet, rising and falling together before flying low over the grasses to hunt. Their low, flap-and-glide flight was like that of the northern harriers we also saw over the fields. I thought, how oddly fitting that this place was once an airport! We watched rough-legged hawks in flight too, dark, husky birds with broad white bands at the base of the tail. A few times, watching one of these raptors, we saw the bird hover briefly or dip a wing, then drop to the ground, out of sight. When it came back up, we strained to see what the bird had seized in its talons, but could not make it out in the fading light. As we turned to go, a fine sunset flared in the west, its red glow reflected in the snowy field. It had been a rewarding excursion. Though we hadn’t covered much ground, we felt we had traveled far.
From Gardiner, drive south on Bruynswick Road (County Route 7) from Route 44-55 (at Lombardi’s Restaurant) to Hoagerburgh Road (County Route 18). Turn left onto Hoagerburgh Road and follow it past the intersection with Long Lane a short distance further to the main entrance of the National Wildlife Refuge on the left. Park in the lot and walk up the road past the information board and steel gate approximately 200 yards to the old airport runway.
