Raptors at Rauner

The other day, while walking back home to Webster Avenue from somewhere on campus, passing the sidewalks between Hitchcock and the Library, I was struck dead in my stride by a cacophony exploding above me. High up in a nearby pine, a colony of chickadees erupted into noise, calling frantically to their fellows in fear and warning. Off to the west, perched high in a pine of their own, a pair of crows cawed in kind, soon to be joined by a few others of their species, so that their watch might be all the more vigilant. Recognizing this behavior as a clear indication of a predator in the vicinity, I began to scan the skyline to catch a glimpse of the culprit who triggered this affair. At once she appeared, swooping rapidly into view and halting in midair with a quick flair of her wings, a broad-winged hawk with a signature white band striped across her tail feathers, twisting in a graceful aerial arc before soaring off to climes where she would be less unwelcome.

I learned this trick for raptor-spotting at the college-sponsored “Raptors at Rauner” event, hosted on the day of Homecoming, October 28th, between the hours of 3:00 and 4:15. The event, apparently necessitating a staggering degree of interdepartmental collaboration, despite its humble ambitions, was co-sponsored by the Dartmouth Library, the Department of History, and the soon-to-be Department of East European, Eurasian and Russian studies, referenced on the flier as the succinct and established Department of Russian. Aside from providing a delightful and informative way to pass an hour before the anticipated bonfire, Raptors at Rauner aimed to draw attention to the recently-updated Augmented Dartmouth app, which was first released during its beta phase of development during Homecoming of 2019.

The Augmented Dartmouth app aims to enhance the experience of students and visitors on Dartmouth’s campus by providing context and information surrounding some of the College’s most iconic landmarks. In the past, users could download the free app, point their camera at one of the many pre-registered locations, and be automatically provided a detailed account of the history and significance of the object in front of them. In its newest iteration, which debuted during the Raptors at Rauner event, users could witness the ambitious plan to implement 3-D augmented reality renderings with the app. 

This new feature is currently limited to the Rauner Special Collections display of Audubon’s “Little Screech Owl,” a print of a watercolor included in his celebrated Birds of America collection. Upon entering the library, visitors could point the camera of the Augmented Dartmouth app to the open page of the book, and the app would recognize the page, generating a 3-D model of the scene depicted, complete with ambient noises and animated wildlife, effectively turning the Audubon into a futuristic pop-up book. The animation was accompanied by the usual trove of relevant information.

I must admit, though the rendering was crude and polygonal, and looked like it may be more at-home on a first generation Playstation than a modern smartphone, I found the concept entertaining and the execution quite charming, and look forward to seeing how this feature may be implemented at other Dartmouth locations. A colleague quipped that it might be fun to be able to point the camera at a headstone in the graveyard, and watch the occupant burst from the earth to tell the user about his life. Rest assured, should this feature come to be in future updates of the app, this story will most certainly be updated.

The real stars of the show were, of course, the raptors themselves; a representative from nearby Squam Lakes Natural Science Center brought with her a few model representatives in their own right. These birds, three in total, each from a different species, are just a few of the many that arrive yearly at Squam Lakes for rehabilitation. Those that came to Dartmouth are rare cases in which release into the wild is not possible, due to one or another permanent disability, and so they are trained to be ambassadors of their kind, and of rehabilitation as a whole, sitting politely and generally putting on a good show for us apes with the means to aid their kin.

The first to appear was a beautiful great horned owl, who the handler assumes is male, although, without expensive bloodwork, it is generally impossible to know for sure (“But he’s never laid an egg, so we’re feeling pretty confident!”). The second was an adorably little northern saw-whet owl, also male, who couldn’t have been more than four ounces sopping wet. The final was a broad-winged hawk, the very same species I spotted myself a few days later, which is quite common during their summer breeding period in New Hampshire, and can be seen in astonishingly great numbers when they undertake their southern migration in the winter. For those who have never attended a bird show before, I highly encourage a trip to the nearest sanctuary, particularly for the raptors. These animals, typically so elusive in the wild, only spotted at the greatest distance and for the smallest moment, are a sight to behold for a prolonged period of time, when you are close enough to see each individual feather that composes their patterns, to understand their striking delicacy that fiercely juxtaposes their strength and ferocity as a predator, and to learn more about these pillars of our ecosystem, who surround us daily and yet so often go unnoticed. 

I was tempted to report here the various factoids and statistics I jotted down during the presentation, which are numerous and interesting in their own right, but I will spare the reader my poorly-executed rendition of an article readily available on Wikipedia. That aside, all that remains to be reported is that the event was well attended by students and faculty, alumni and guests alike, and, as many of these generally underrated library events tend to do, provided a delightful way for me to spend my afternoon.