By Clay Sutton

It is only late July, July 24 to be exact, but after the lumbering summer cold front cleared the Cape last night with a spectacular lightning show and about a half inch of desperately needed rain, I thought I'd go to Cape May.

Yes, it's still summer at the shore, with tourists filling the beaches and boardwalks, terns carrying food to feed hungry young, white herons brilliant dots of light against verdant green meadows, their shapes muted by heat and haze.

My excuse for going to Cape May was even summer-oriented. I hadn't checked on the Mississippi Kites for a few weeks. There had been some evidence of potential nesting back in early July, a seemingly territorial pair defending the back fields along Pond Creek Marsh against Cooper's Hawks and Turkey Vultures alike. Fanciful, yes . . . but just maybe.

However, that was the excuse, not the reason I headed south. It is midsummer maybe, but fall is just around the corner. Why, we once started the hawkwatch on August 15, mind you, just three weeks away! I was drawn south to the Point as inexorably as a migratory bird. Call it migratory restlessness, zugenruhe, but I felt the urge and had to go. I needed to think about the coming fall.

I went to the Beanery, because that's where the Kites had been, but also because that is where, at this time of year, you can be alone to contemplate, to anticipate, the fall. No bicycles, no joggers, no jet skis, just the pageant of the sky—a wide-open sky following the cold front's passage. I scanned for Kites, for clues to nesting, yet none came. That's OK, it was just a whim. Yet some year they will nest . . . Maybe next year.

It may surprise you that I didn't bird much. Mostly I just thought about the coming autumn, when waves of migrants would wash over the peninsula like waves over a flood tide sandbar. Mostly I anticipated.

We once played a mind game every year, first just Pete Dunne, Keith Seager, and I, trying to predict the next "good bird," the next rarity, the next county record that would come with the season. We haven't indulged in that guessing game for a while now—the logistics of getting all the Cape May birders together for the requisite "think tank" has all but precluded that. But still, on this July morning I could dream, and the skies over Pond Creek Marsh were made for fantasy. Daydreaming of the past, of a string of White Ibis over South Cape May Meadows, of a lone Wood Stork circling high over the Point, black and white on blue, energizing the sky. Now, savoring the coming season, I wondered what the winds of fortune, the fronts of fall would bring our way.

I journeyed farther south, to Cape May Point State Park, and found it pleasantly, relatively, empty of people. It was important on this July day to sit on the hawkwatch, to gaze to the north from whence they would come, to gaze into the future, to contemplate, to simply wait. And, although I hadn't really come to bird, I found myself "practicing"—ID'ing swallows and terns. The anticipation was growing. When the waves come you need to be ready.

I fidgeted with my binoculars, new binoculars. I adjusted the straps, cleaned the lenses for the first time, acquainted myself with infinity, and played with the focus wheel. Because birders require so little in the way of equipment, we will never really know the joy of getting ready.

Back when I hunted pheasants, taking out the sleek L.C. Smith double, cleaning it, oiling it, polishing the stock was a ritual, as eagerly anticipated, almost, as the chase itself. At the onset of every fishing season, we lubricate our reels, put new line on them. We sharpen hooks, check guides on rods, make bucktail lures. It is all pure fun, pure anticipation. For birders though, the preparation must remain in the mind. The lack of the ritual of getting ready, of preparation, is something lacking in modern drive-up birding.

And so I practice. Distant egrets, molting ducks in Bunker Pond, juvenile terns. I've got to be ready.

For fall at Cape May today is more akin to big game hunting, or trophy fishing, than it is to, say, backyard birding. The Cape today has more high-powered birders in one place than probably anywhere on earth. By Labor Day, over thirty people with world-class skills will be afield, before dawn, every day, daily. And that's just the resident birders, and doesn't count the visiting birders.

So I've got to practice in order to be able to hold my own. I chuckle out loud as I think of rarities and remember the Whiskered Tern that showed up in 1993. When I got the phone call I had innocently said, "a what?," with no clue that such a bird even existed. I've since seen hundreds in Spain so at least I'm ready for that one. The year before last, I was well aware of Brown-chested Martins, had seen many in Venezuela, and even knew there were three previous North American records, but for the life of me I couldn't remember the field marks to identify it, to separate it from Gray-breasted Martin.

The pressure. With the skill levels at Cape May, birding is more akin to fighting a one-hundred-pound tarpon than fishing for bluegills in a farm pond. Here, people search for trophies.

The competition. No, you certainly need not play at this level, you can enjoy birding at any level, as you can fishing. Yet I have chosen to make my career here, as a birder, partly as a guide and tour leader at the Cape. I have chosen my bed and must lay in it. Therefore, by geography rather than a choice of my own, I am playing in the big leagues.

So I "practice." Yet today these thoughts are not troubling, but keenly amusing. Today is not a day to think of birds that I've missed, or birds misidentified. It's not a day to think about the ones that got away or even habitats forever lost. Today is a day to conjure the fall, to think about the skies soon to be full of birds. Clouds now begin to build from the northwest, and the wind begins to freshen. They are not the clouds of fall, but they hold a hint of fall.

When I first began hawkwatching, Al Nicholson, my raptor mentor, always linked good flights to the quality of the sky. Despite northwest winds, if the sky was "flat" few birds would be expected. However, glowing "halcyon blue skies" would portend Peregrines, and the "magnificent depth" of billowing November cumulus would promise Golden Eagles. I soon learned the cause and effect relationship, but little understood it. Later, Paul Kerlinger, with scientific insight, would explain it. Clouds indicate convection, and updrafts mean good lift. Simply, birds do not fly as well, as efficiently, in cloudless skies. Therefore, the better the clouds, the better the lift, and far more birds will migrate.

I have learned to wait for the "cloud streets" which form over the Cape in September. Surrounded by the colder waters off the peninsula, the warm landmass creates thermals, and a narrow band of billowing clouds will often stretch far to the north. It is a highway in the sky, and why, so often, all incoming birds are found in the exact same spot in the sky to the north of the hawkwatch. It is where the lift is greatest. And so, for me, anticipating the birds of fall has become in part an anticipation of lovely, billowing, churning clouds, shades of white and gray against autumnal blue.

Just before the clouds falter in the summer heat, there are a few migrants. A flock of Least Sandpipers rushes by, a Solitary Sandpiper calls from behind Saint Mary's, out over Delaware Bay. Two American Kestrel are found, ragged molting adults, high in the sky heading out. A lone Osprey appears, its altitude and trajectory over the Point suggesting that it is an early migrant and not a fishing local. They hint of things to come, of what the north wind skies will bring in the coming weeks and months.

The few clouds dissipate, I turn to leave and realize the park is filling fast with beach goers, picnickers, and lighthouse climbers. While I have been lost in the fall, summer has returned. Time to go.

I allow myself one last scan. The realities of my work schedule, travel, and deadlines mean that realistically this will be my last chance to savor the fall alone. The next visit will be in earnest, leading field trips, birding hard, and yes, inexorably competing. On my next trip south to Cape May, it will be "showtime."

The last scan, wondering what will be. The sky is empty now, of clouds and birds. The only birds flying are in my mind. But soon the skies will be full, of thermals, telltale clouds, and birds. The skies of fall will come and I can hardly wait!