Chris Pugliese, a landscape architect who coordinates the Rose Tree hawk watch, grew up two miles from the park, "but I never knew all this was going on above me."
The Rose Tree site is odd in that it shares space with recycling events, car shows, dog shows, you name it.
"The people who stumble across us, there's this 'aha' moment," Pugliese said. Maybe there's a bald eagle flying overhead. Rose Tree sees 200 to 250 of them in a season. "They're absolutely flabbergasted."
Cape May's count started in 1976 with Dunne, the first official counter, standing atop a makeshift table. He counts it as one of the best two periods of his life, the other being when he met his wife, Linda.
Last year, on the first day of the count, Cape May watchers saw 143 raptors, including 13 bald eagles, 44 osprey, 24 Cooper's hawks, and a merlin.
Nowhere near a record - that was set Oct. 4, 1977, when counters recorded 21,800 raptors.
Wednesday held little promise. Winds switching to the south would keep many birds farther north up the Jersey peninsula. But by noon, Roach, this season's official counter, had logged about 50.
And the regulars came by all morning anyway.
Tom Johnson had just finished his morning shift on Cape May's songbird count, which began Aug. 16. He'd logged 400 warblers.
"It's a different day every day," said Doug Gochfeld, another young "bird bum," whose previous seasonal job was in Alaska studying Hudsonian godwits. A dawn flyover of kestrels - 80 in less than an hour - is still a vivid memory.
At 12:05 p.m., one of the watchers called out, "Bald eagle by the lighthouse!" Wings flapping slowly and powerfully, it circled to the north and then disappeared.
Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
Visit her blog at http://go.philly.com/greenspace.
