Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch – The Early Years
Read at 25th Anniversary Banquet – September 22, 2001
By Brenda Tekin
They were a small group of friends who more often times were found out in the field during their free time, actively bird watching. Some of them have gone on, those early pioneers, like Isabelle Obershein and John Henkle, leaving behind only a handful of the early adventurers. It is to these individuals we seek answers to some of our questions. It is to them we learn how Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch came about.
Everyone agrees it was at the urging of Myriam Moore, who by then was actively involved with HMANA, Hawk Migration Association of North America. It was she who saw Rockfish Gap as a prospective location to see good numbers of hawks during the fall migration.
On that one September day in 1976, this small group of bird watching friends that included Yulee Larner, John and Mozelle Henkle, and Isabelle Obershein, met at the Holiday Inn lookout parking lot and in six hours tallied 9 species totaling 765 raptors, the bulk consisting of 713 Broad-wing. The following year they put in 22 hours over a period of four days at the lookout producing a total count of 1,233.
These “raptorians” visited different sites during the autumn months, not committing to one specific area. Mozelle Henkle was not one to stay put when things got slow, as she put it, and they would move around quite a bit to different locations that included Calf and Loft Mountains and an open field down near Love, VA where she recalls they saw only one Turkey Vulture. But Myriam Moore persisted in getting these wanderlings to devote more time at Rockfish Gap instead of moving around; she encouraged them to be more patient and stay put in one spot.
During the next three years, this devoted group put in 72 hours over the course of 14 days at the overlook and their patience paid off with 3,652 raptors.
Shortly before her retirement in 1978, Jane Nichol recalls reading a newspaper article on the hawk watch at the Holiday Inn overlook and at the invitation of Yulee Larner, drove up to check it out. She, like many of us, almost immediately succumbed to the joys of hawk watching and quickly joined the ranks of the raptorians.
By the end of 1980 when 11 days and 88 hours of coverage had yielded that season’s total of 2,297, Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch was well established and recognized as a prominent fall hawk watch location in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This was the same year for the first recorded migrating Bald Eagle, an adult, observed by June Crutchfield and Mozelle Henkle.
Both Jane and Myriam are confined by the frailties of aging and are no longer able to visit the mountains they love. They have only their memories now and Jane recalls those days when they would sit upon the large rock looking skyward.
Many individuals have come and gone like the passing raptors but they live on in our hearts and minds. They are the past, present and future spirit of Rockfish Gap Hawk Watch.
