Alice Fox and Nancy Schreher first met a year ago at Cafe Kubal, introduced by a mutual friend. A common interest in knitting helped them connect, but that’s not what’s made them recognizable figures on and around the Syracuse University campus in the year since. For that, they can thank the inhabitants of a tiny pile of twigs.

The conversation over coffee quickly shifted to their love for hawks, and it hasn’t really veered to another topic yet. Fox told Schreher about the red-tailed hawk nest that sits under an arch on the eastward facing side of Lyman Hall. As often as they could, they’d walk over to it to watch. Early morning, during lunch or after work, they’d check in on the hawks. But Fox and Schreher weren’t alone.

So the two started Syracuse Hawk Chatters, a Facebook group to document the life of the hawks and engage with fellow BOGs — birders on ground. SU Sue and Otto, the names given to the mating hawks that have nested here for years, expect three eggs to hatch as early as the end of this week. The chatter has grown to a new level with a livestream camera installed last month. Viewers have joined from more than 110 countries. Fox said the group gained about 70 new members after the livestream’s launch, bringing the total over 300.

“It’s such a diverse group of people that I didn’t realize so many people liked red-tails,” Fox said. “It’s fun.”

The camera was made possible thanks to a donation from SU alumna Anne Marie Higgins. She approached SU with the idea last summer, and with a little guidance from the Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca — where there’s been a hawk cam for years — it became a reality. SU’s department of biology sponsors the project and is using it for research.

Not that it’s a competition, but Higgins’ bond with the hawks could be deeper than that any of her fellow BOGs. She used to bird-watch with her late husband. Even though he’s now gone, she still hears him through hawks. She’s even written a book about it entitled “Dancing in Two Realms.”

“I believe that we’re all spiritually connected,” she said. “The human-animal connection is very close.”

Fox and Schreher feel the connection as well. Schreher said sometimes when she’s out looking for one of the hawks, one will swoop by as if it was looking for her, too. Some studies say hawks recognize faces.

“We do feel over time that they get to know us,” Schreher said.

Courtesy of Trudi Porter and Syracuse Hawk Chatters

For these hawk chatters, the experience goes beyond just observing — at times it even gets interactive. They’ll spend hours walking through campus and the surrounding area looking for the hawks, no matter the weather conditions. And although young hawks, called fledglings or juvies, move on once they’re ready, parent hawks nest in the same place every year and don’t migrate. Home is home for good.

Juvies have about a 75 percent rate of not surviving their first year, according to Schreher and Fox. Sometimes they’ll starve because they can’t hunt. Often they’ll get hit by a car or crash into a window.

Last summer, six hawks hatched at SU, an unusually high amount. One, named Beau, crashed once and was taken in until he was rehabilitated. Not long after he was released, he crashed again into the windows of the Physics Building, a tragic end for Beau.

“He thought he was flying into a tree, but he flew into the great beyond instead,” Higgins said.

Although Beau’s death brought the hawk chatters closer, it strained emotions. To limit the pain of future hawk deaths, the chatters consider ditching names for a more scientific identification system by referring to the assumed three juvies this season as 17A,17B and 17C.

“You have to keep in front of you that life is very risky for them,” Schreher said.

But not all bonding points are so unfortunate. Fox and Schreher recalled one fond memory of last year’s juvies that sticks out. Near Crouse College, on what they call woodchuck hill, three juvies put on a show.

One, perched in an apple tree, was knocking the fruit off to the two on the ground. The apples would tumble downhill, the two juvies chasing after and pouncing on them. Once they caught up, they’d throw the apples in the air and do it all over again. Important practice for when they need to swoop in and grab live prey on the run, but it had the chatters rolling on the ground laughing.

Sitting in that same coffee shop where they met a year ago, Schreher spoke of a time in Oakwood Cemetery when someone knew she was a hawk chatter because of her binoculars. Fox, sporting a shirt with large BOG lettering, said strangers have come up to her well aware of who she is.

They might not have earned celebrity status just yet, but the hawk chatter is noticeably louder.

Published on April 9, 2017 at 10:17 pm

Contact: jtbloss@syr.edu | @jtbloss