18 The Earth Calls Frightful

pure peregrine, sailing blue skies, journeying to new worlds—and that means she migrates." "Oh, Sam," Alice said, then thought a minute. "What makes birds migrate?" "A lot of things, but mostly lack of food in the cold north. They follow the food supply." "Then don't feed her if you are so anxious for her to be a pilgrim falcon." "I'm not going to," he said, stepping back to try to find Frightful among the branches of the ancient hemlock, but primarily to keep Alice from seeing his great sadness. He wanted Frightful to stay with all his heart. "I'm not going to," he repeated. IN WHICH The Earth Calls Frightful And then it happened.

Frightful hopped from limb to limb until she reached the wispy top of the ancient hemlock. She turned her head slowly as she took a bearing on the sun's rays. She fixed on a longitude between ninety and seventy degrees. After many takes, the direction was indelibly printed on her brain. She pointed her head and body along the invisible line. She bent her knees and ankles. She lowered her wings. "Alice," Sam whispered. "Frightful's leaving us!" "How do you know?" "Look at her. She has that southward concentration of migrating birds. I've seen it in robins and blackbirds." Frightful flew. She did not look back. "But she loves you," Alice cried. "She can't go. She doesn't know what to do without you." "But she does," said Sam, watching her disappear. "She's flying south. "Come back in the spring," he called, then added, "I'll be waiting." Sam climbed the old hemlock, trying to catch one last glimpse of his beloved bird. She was already

far away. She rode the prevailing wind over the familiar mountains and rivers and beyond the Catskills into unknown territory. She did not hesitate or turn back. She memorized the landscape as she flew— forests, rivers, highways, and cities. In one hour she saw the Atlantic Ocean ahead. Its plantless expanse told her it was not the way to go. She came down on a tor above the Hudson River and perched in an isolated ash tree. A Cooper's hawk and two red-tails were hunting not far away. Frightful noted the moisture in the air, the clouds, the wind, and the other migrating birds passing overhead. Blackbirds swarmed over the cattail swamp at the bottom of Hook Mountain. In the morning the sky was clear and blue. She perched in the top of the ash, waiting for the earth to warm and the wind to rise and carry her on her way. She took off about nine o'clock. "Peregrine!" a man on the top of Hook Mountain shouted with gusto. He was seated before a spotting scope.

"That makes forty peregrines for the month," said a woman sitting on a camp stool. She put a check beside "peregrine falcon" in the raptor counting book. The tor top was speckled with men and women who came to Hook Mountain in the autumn to count the birds of prey. Each year these people, like thousands of others, tallied raptors along the four migratory flyways in North America—the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central, and Pacific flyways. They counted because the birds of prey were losing ground in the fight for survival. By comparing their numbers each year, the counters could tell whether or not their efforts to ban pesticides and pass laws protecting the birds were working. The birds of prey were vital to the health of North America. The people on Hook Mountain cheered when Frightful went over. A peregrine was a thrill to see. The bird had been eliminated by DDT and pesticides in much of the United States in the forties, fifties, and sixties. Even now it was still a rare sight—a beautiful rare sight. Frightful's wings cut circles in the wind that sped her southeast toward the ocean. Abreast of New York City, she sensed she was off-course. Her

internal compass and the increasing moisture in the air sent her westward. Rough air bounced her back and forth, but she found her longitude again over the New Jersey marshlands. She dropped down to rest on the post of a duck blind. A shotgun blasted. She took off, skimmed low over the tops of the sedges until she found a thermal, and rode it, ringing swiftly up, barely moving her wings as it carried her out of the range of the duck hunters' guns. Soaring, tipping, circling at the top of the thermal was Drum. "Creee, creee, creee," she called. Her first tiercel eyas answered with nestling talk, "Pseee," then adult talk, "Creee, creee, creee." They sped out of the thermal together and started down the coast. They flew extremely high, keeping the ocean on their left. Drum had taken this trip last year. He picked smooth winds between towers of clouds as he led Frightful through the sky. Frightful and Drum and several other birds of prey kept each other in sight. Traveling together, they

formed a sky club. Before long they came to know each other and passed on information about the weather and the terrain. The experienced ones knew to come down early before a storm. Others sensed turbulence approaching and took detours around destructive winds. Over Virginia a sudden gust of dry air pushed Frightful ahead of Drum. She had learned at Delhi that such a wind would be followed by a cold front. She flew faster to keep ahead of it. Six hundred miles from Hook Mountain, she came down on a utility pole on Cape Hatteras. Fifteen minutes later Drum joined her. Dropping out of the sky by twos and ones came the goshawk, the kestrel, the red-tailed, and the sharp-shinned—the bird club. They spread out over the vast wetland. Frightful looked down on black ducks, mallards, blue-winged teals, plovers, godwits, yellowlegs, sandpipers—all the migrating birds that loved wetlands. At the sight of a peregrine falcon they vanished. Frightful did not chase them. She was looking for pigeons and rats but actually was not very hungry. She was living on her migratory fat. Perched on the pole, she oiled her feathers, which had become dry at the high altitudes. Drum oiled