Furnace Hills Hawk Watch

     Early in October of 1974, I heard someone spotted black vultures in the wooded Furnace Hills on the border of Lancaster and Lebanon Counties in Pennsylvania.  At that time, black vultures were uncommon here, so I sat on a high step of the 75 foot tall Cornwall Fire Tower on the top of a thousand foot mountain a few times that October to watch for those vultures.  I saw a wonderful view of my home area and turkey vultures, but no black vultures.  However, I saw several handsome hawks of a few kinds and a couple staely bald eagles soaring southwest by the fire tower.  Those diurnal raptors were migrating to the south to escape the coming winter!
     No one in the Lancaster County Bird Club, of which I was a member at the time, mentioned hawk migrations along the southwest-running, wooded Furnace Hills of northern Lancaster County because nobody knew of it.  During the winter of 1974-1975, I told members of that club about the hawk migrations by the fire tower and one club member got permission and a key to the wooden "cabin" on top of the tower from the Bureau of Forestry, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources.  The Lancaster County Bird Club's hawk watch at the Cornwall Fire Tower officially started early in September in 1975 and continued every autumn through to and including the fall of 1989.  Only four bird club members could be on the tower at one time for bird watching from early September to mid-November of each autumn.  Observers filled in charts of weather, flight patterns and the numbers of each kind of hawk and eagle seen each day of coverage.
     Several bird club members took turns staffing the cabin on top of the tower, not every fall day, but many of them, to watch for hawks and eagles soaring by that structure in migration.  The cabin had four large, wooden flaps that could be raised inward and hooked to the ceiling so hawk watchers could see in every direction.  The one to four observers at a time in that wooden box on the tower thoroughly enjoyed and were inspired by the hundreds of handsome hawks sailing majestically southwest by it.  Camaraderie and joking developed among two or more observers between inspiring sights of migrating raptors.  Some people even brought coffee and snacks to the cabin.  A fun, up-lifting time was had by all.
     Twelve kinds of hawks and two types of eagles migrated by the Cornwall Fire Tower in those 15 autumn seasons, which is the number of diurnal raptors to be expected in this area each fall.  Many individuals came from the east and northeast and followed the southwest running slopes to the south.  Some years only about 2,000 raptors passed the fire tower while one fall an impressive ten thousand plus did.  But most years about 4,000 to 5,000 hawks and eagles passed by the tower in an autumn.
     Migrant broad-winged hawks float by in awe-inspiring flocks of scores or hundreds most every day during the middle of September.  From the Cornwall Tower one September late-afternoon, I was fortunate to see scores of broadies diving head-first into the deciduous woods around the tower.  There they would spend that night perched in trees.  Early the next morning they would hunt insects, mice, small birds and other little creatures before lifting off in mid-morning to find thermals of sun-heated air that would lift them higher and higher into the sky at the start of the next day's  migration.  
     Single sharp-shinned hawks, sometimes one right after another, zipped excitingly by the tower on days of north or northwest winds during October.  Those winds are pushed up the southwest running mountains by wind from behind, pushing the hawks up with them.
     Majestic red-tailed hawks, on large, flat-out wings, also rode northwest winds down the ridges and by the tower during the latter part of October and well into November.  Some days in October, sharpies and red-tails stole the hawk migration show at the Cornwall Fire Tower.
     Other species of hawks and the eagles made occasional showings by the tower every autumn.  The most exciting raptors were the majestic ospreys, bald eagles, golden eagles and the thrilling, dashing peregrine falcons and Cooper's hawks.  Stately golden eagles mostly went by during November.
     Other kinds of intriguing birds were seen from the top of the tower each fall.  An occasional ruffed grouse would be spotted eating the lovely, blue-black fruits of black gum trees below the tower.  Flocks of honking, south-bound Canada geese, American crows and blue jays from nesting grounds in Canada would be noted passing the tower in mid-October.  And migrant groups of chimney swifts, tree swallows, American robins, eastern bluebirds, common grackles and red-winged blackbirds would be spotted from the tower at times.
     But several species of warblers, and red-eyed and solitary vireos, feeding on invertebrates in the trees below, were often the highlight of being in the tower, beside the raptor migrations that is.  Every fall beautifully feathered black-throated green, black-throated blue, yellow-rumped, Cape May, blackburnian and other warbler species would be spotted from the tower like jewels in the foliage.
     Observers in the tower also had a ringside view of the beautiful leaf color change each autumn.  The first trees to have red leaves were black gums and flowering dogwoods in early September.  Each fall day more leaves turned red, yellow or brown as the season progressed.  By the third week in October the leaf color change reached its climax; and what a striking, breath-taking sight it was each year.  The woods were a riot of warm colors unique to October.  Then the trees rapidly became bare and tower observers could see the forest and its floor like no time before in autumn.  
     The Lancaster County Bird Club's hawk watch ended in the fall of 1989.  And the tower was taken down since that time.  But the pleasant memories of an autumn migrant hawk watch in Lancaster County remains.  The visions of speeding sharp-shins, soaring red-tails and golden eagles, lovely colors of warblers' feathers, varying wind and weather, camaraderie, coffee, beautiful scenery and striking colored leaves are still part of the observers' being to this day.  The hawk watch in the Cornwall Fire Tower in the wooded Furnace Hills of northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania will always be a highlight of Lancaster County's bird club.