“I looked up and, oh my goodness, the sky was full of vultures and hawks and eagles. I came home and told my wife what was happening in the Pembina Valley, and the rest is history.”
This is Al Schritt’s recollection of the spring day in March of 1986 when, during lunch with his students, his observant nature helped discover a significant revelation about the Pembina Valley that hadn’t been recorded yet.
Put simply, the valley's physical attributes are just right to facilitate the migration of birds across one defined path — approximately 18 species of a nearly unfathomable number of animals.
Although properly speaking, Schritt was the second person to notice the influx, his passion and enthusiasm translated into widespread knowledge of the vernal trend.
Today, not only is his legacy one of recording a phenomenon that interests nature lovers worldwide, but he has also ensured that the unique feature is well-documented for future generations. His impact, however, doesn't stop there.
Thanks to him, anyone who appreciates all things avian can witness a flurry of life with their own eyes each spring.
A project begun with the late Dorothy Schritt
Schritt has been busy since he noticed the birds in flight all those years ago.
At the peak times of movement, approximately three times a week, he visits the same viewing area he discovered on that spring day to help record sightings on the HawkCount website.
“In North America, hawk watchers routinely count the number of hawks, eagles and falcons that pass over key migration sites. There are nearly 200 count sites in Canada, USA and Mexico.”
-Paul Goossen, who helps collect data on the HawkCount website.
These days, Schritt collects information with the help of the birders who appear at the site, but it’s a practice that began alongside his wife, Dorothy.
“We did a 10-year study, which usually brought us to the valley by the beginning of March and took us through to the end of April. My wife and I started that study, and after she passed in 2010, I continued for three more years,” he says. “We collected an amazing volume of data on the migration of hawks and eagles in the Pembina Valley, and that is available to anybody.”
A keen observer of the HawkCount website will see that Al and Dorothy Schritt come up repeatedly as “official counters” and observers of raptors. It’s clear that without their efforts, there would be significantly less data.
Another dimension of the Schritts' legacy is their generosity. When it comes to research and the location of the raptor migration, the pair has always been gracious about sharing with everyone.
This has also left an impact in the birding community.
“I have greatly appreciated Al and his late wife Dorothy's willingness to share their earlier hawk watch experiences and information from their time in the valley,” says Paul Goossen, whose efforts have also been involved in recording raptor sightings.
“If it weren't for Al's involvement with the hawk watch, our knowledge of raptor migration in the valley would be much poorer.”
A scrapbook from the past
Schritt’s interest in birds can be traced back to his childhood. Recently, when he was going through a box of items from that time in his life, he encountered something from grade five that acts as evidence of this.
“[I found] a scrapbook where I pasted pictures of birds that came in either a coffee can or a coffee box. [I] wrote little write-ups about them, which I would have gleaned from, in those days, the World Book Encyclopedia, or maybe a bird book,” he says.
“It revealed that I already had a good interest in birds all the way back to when I was ten years old.”
Schritt credits his father for his love of nature. He brought the family camping, fishing, and on trips “all over Canada.”
“My dad was a real good model and mentor in enjoying nature,” he says, adding that he has also passed on this mindset to his own children.
Birds for the world to see
Between an early interest in birds and his revelation in 1986, Schritt hasn’t lost an ounce of enthusiasm for welcoming raptors to the Pembina Valley over the years.
It’s contagious.
Now, many people visit the attraction, especially those who wish to see a golden eagle. According to Schritt, the Pembina Valley is the best location in the province to see the bird, which is now common knowledge thanks, in part, to him.
“We have really put the Pembina Valley on the map for birders across North America,” he says.
“We’ve had visitors from Brandon, visitors from Winnipeg, and of all things, we had a visitor from the Netherlands who was in Canada and wanted to see what was happening with hawk and eagle migration in the Pembina Valley. The news has spread around quite well.”
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Schritt occasionally sees a few other special visitors at the site, including the children of the man who first discovered the region's raptor migration about 10-15 years before Schritt did.
“They come to the valley, I would say, once a year in spring, just maybe for a little remembrance [of] the good old days with their dad, who took them along to the Pembina Valley,” he says. “I’m only too happy if I'm there on the day that they arrive because they don't let me know they're coming, but it's so nice to have them still pay honour to their dad.”
‘Air surfing’ birds
With a sense of community and a shared purpose of recording data, it's easy to understand why humans visit the Pembina Valley in spring, but one might ask why exactly the birds come.
It begins with the variegated concept of migration.
When one pictures a migration, it’s easy to imagine straight lines — geese travel south for the winter, and they travel north back home. The corridor in the Pembina Valley, however, is more complex.
“Birds included in what we call raptors are hawks, eagles, falcons, osprey and owls. As most owls are active at night, their seasonal movements are not obvious, making it a difficult challenge to count them. Counting day-time raptors, such as hawks and eagles, is much easier.”
-Paul Goossen, who is involved in recording birds on the HawkCount website.
Some species travel from as far as South America to traverse the valley year after year, others return from elsewhere in North America to where they hatched, and some pass through on the way to places like the Canadian territories and Alaska for breeding.
The Pembina Valley, then, is at an intersection of activity.
“What's so very important for the raptors in their migration is a valley or a land structure that is going to throw up currents of air updrafts,” says Schritt. “When the winds are from the south, there is an updraft on the north ridge of the valley.”
Schritt says that if conditions are perfect (i.e. there is an updraft on the north ridge), birds can “air surf” along it “for miles without flapping.”
Of course, given the scale and distance of migration trips, the chance to forego wing flapping conserves a great deal of energy for the birds as they travel.
The valley route across a continent
The birds' path of least resistance through the Pembina Valley does not begin or end in the area — it's only a stop along the way.
“These birds are coming up the flyway all the way from Texas, Oklahoma, and then up through Nebraska and then the Dakotas and then to us, so when they're coming northward, and they're in the vicinity of Walhalla, they catch the Pembina Valley,” says Schritt.
“They'll take it all the way northwestward, and when the Pembina Valley runs out, then they do a valley hop into the Souris River Valley, and they follow that one northwestward and then they get into the Assiniboine River Valley, and they'll follow that northwestward, [and so on].”
Schritt says the network of valleys leads all the way to the Columbia Icefields between Banff and Jasper.
How can one view all these birds?
For anyone who would like to see the birds in action, Schritt has some directions and some advice. He says the peak time for the raptor migration is the third week of March until the Middle of April (although some birds already arrive by the middle of February).
He also shares the location.
“In case people haven't caught it so far, the place where we are in the Pembina Valley is on Provincial Road 201, where it intersects with the Pembina River down in the bottom. There's a bridge there,” he says. “If you go southward after the bridge and go up the hill, you will come to the Pembina Valley Bible Camp.”
Visitors to the area will find a group of cars parked off to the side to avoid blocking traffic and friendly people sitting in lawn chairs carrying binoculars and cameras.
Everyone is warmly welcomed.
“We invite [anyone] to join us, and hopefully, if they stay for five or ten minutes, they will get to see a few birds,” says Schritt. “If it's a person who's new to birding, we are very happy to have them listen to our chatter, which involves calling out that there's a bird coming. Usually, somebody just shouts, ‘Bird!’ and then they'll say where it is on a clock face.”
Schritt says that anyone new to the process will find it “comical,” but that's a part of the fun.
He notes that there are no washroom facilities nearby, so attendees should be aware of that. He also encourages everyone to dress in layers to accommodate the changing spring weather and, of course, to bring hats, sunscreen, and snacks.
An idyllic experience
Schritt says that in addition to the raptors, there are spring days that feature songbirds and other small species by the flocks, including large groups of robins.
There are also northern flickers, woodpeckers, warblers, and thrushes. For the early risers, there is sometimes the “odd howling by the coyotes in the morning.”
For the nature lover, with a bit of patience, a visit to the location of the Schritt legacy is sure to be heavenly.
A single visit may be enough to understand why Schritt has devoted over four decades of his life to preserving the majestic attraction in the Pembina Valley.