A Field Guide to Hanover Country Club & Pine Park
My father was a passionate golfer. Throughout my childhood he played on weekends, sometimes 36 holes in a day. When he retired in 1982, he played five days a week until he died in 1997. I’ve never cared much for the game myself, but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time at Hanover Country Club. Or, to be precise, in the rough between the seventh and 15th fairways.
I go there because of the pugnacious, robin-sized falcons known as merlins. And the merlins go there because of the crows. None of us play golf.
During the past 30 years merlins have extended their breeding range out of the boreal forests of Quebec and Labrador south into northern New England because of two decidedly related events. First, we’ve carved suburban parks and golf courses out of solid forests. Second, crows have found our land use practices much to their liking.
Merlins can swoop at 60 m.p.h., grab a hapless warbler or a swallow out of the air and then pluck and feed without breaking stroke, eddies of feathers trailing behind them. They are superb aerialists and pester bigger birds, such as hawks and crows, swooping and diving and chasing. All the while screaming, always screaming.
Merlins, however, are not the only wild-side attraction at the golf course. There are bald eagles, coyotes and barred owls, as well as a medley of warblers, and even a fox that pounces on voles around a water hazard. Here's a brief look at some of the creatures that inhabit one of the most natural areas on campus.
TED LEVIN lives in Vermont. His next book, America’s Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake, will be published next spring by the University of Chicago Press.
