Walk the paved loop past Parking Lot #5 at Fort Washington State Park on the first morning of September and you'll likely pass someone standing still, neck craned, binoculars up, not moving for minutes at a time. They're not lost. They're counting.
Here's the part that doesn't add up on paper. Hawk migration sites are supposed to work because of geography, a ridge line that funnels rising air, a coastline that concentrates flight paths, something the birds are using to save energy on a few-thousand-mile trip south. Militia Hill has none of that. It tops out around 330 feet with no large body of water nearby, and the volunteers who've run the count here for decades say so themselves. And yet every fall, all 16 species of raptor that migrate along the East Coast show up over this particular patch of Whitemarsh and Upper Dublin township woods, in numbers that rival watch sites built on the geography Militia Hill doesn't have.
The Count That Shouldn't Work This Well
The Militia Hill Hawk Watch has been counted every fall since 1988, run by volunteer birders affiliated with the Wyncote Audubon Society from a two-story observation deck built by volunteers in 1995. The deck sits near Lot #5, off the Militia Hill Road entrance to the park, and it's positioned to catch what the site actually does have going for it: updrafts that form as raptors ride the low, wooded terrain south along their annual route, some headed no farther than the mid-Atlantic, others continuing as far as Central and South America.
The standout data point in the whole record is a single day. On September 15, 2013, compilers tallied 18,055 broad-winged hawks passing over Militia Hill, a number that still gets cited every time the site's coordinators explain why a park with no dramatic topography draws people who could just as easily drive two hours to Hawk Mountain instead. Season totals over the watch's history have generally landed somewhere in the range of 10,000 to 11,000 raptors counted, spread across the full 61-day window. The math on that day in 2013 alone accounts for what would otherwise be nearly two full average seasons, in a single morning, over a park most people drive past on Bethlehem Pike without a second look.
The Window: September 1 Through October 31
The count itself runs on a fixed calendar, September 1 through October 31, with volunteer compilers stationed on the deck daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. There's no admission fee, and the lower level of the platform is ADA accessible. If you're timing a visit around the best odds of a big flight, the broad-winged hawk push, the species behind that 2013 record day, tends to peak in mid-to-late September, and the birders who track this site closely note that light north-northeast winds in the 3 to 8 mph range are what produce the strongest days. Calm, hot afternoons with no wind at all tend to be quiet. A brisk fall morning after a cold front, less so.
Other than the peak broad-wing window, the deck rewards patience more than perfect timing. Sharp-shinned hawks, ospreys, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons all pass through across the same two months, just in smaller numbers and less concentrated bursts than the broad-wings that make mid-September the headline act.
Getting There Without Just Driving to a Parking Lot
The most direct approach is the Hawk Watch Loop itself, a route of roughly 3.8 miles with about 360 feet of elevation gain that starts at the observation deck, climbs past the group campsite, crosses the road into a quieter stretch of trail network, then loops back around the disc golf course and along the old rail line to return to the deck. It's rated easy to moderate, which for this stretch of Montgomery County means shaded, mostly wide, and not particularly steep, with the usual caveat that low spots turn muddy for a day or two after heavy rain.
For residents who'd rather arrive on foot from elsewhere in the park, the Green Ribbon Trail is the connector worth knowing. It's a paved and gravel multi-use path that runs about 2.5 miles between the Militia Hill and Flourtown day-use areas along the Wissahickon Creek, and it doesn't stop at the park boundary. The trail continues roughly 12.6 miles through the surrounding communities, eventually linking up with Fairmount Park's Forbidden Drive in Chestnut Hill, which means a hawk watch morning can turn into an afternoon bike ride toward Ambler or Chestnut Hill without ever getting back in a car.
If you're bringing people who'd rather not stand still watching the sky for two hours, the park has an answer for that too. The Militia Hill Day Use Area has a wooded nine-hole disc golf course that starts near Lot #2, suitable for players of any skill level, and it sits close enough to the observation deck that a group can split up and regroup within the same visit.
What the Volunteers Say About Why They Keep Doing This
When the watch marked its 30th season, longtime site coordinator Rich Conroy described how the whole thing started, with a card table and a few folding chairs back in 1988, and what's kept people coming back to a hilltop with no obvious geographic reason to draw birds at all. His point, made at the time, was less about the numbers and more about the experience of standing on an ordinary hill a few minutes from Philadelphia and realizing that hundreds of raptors are moving south overhead on any given afternoon, whether anyone happens to be looking up or not.
That's really the answer to the puzzle. Militia Hill doesn't have a ridge or a coastline forcing birds into a narrow flight path the way classic hawk-watch sites do. What it has is a deck positioned to catch a broader regional flyway that happens to pass low enough over this specific stretch of wooded hillside to be visible and countable, year after year, without any of the topography that would normally explain it. The site works because a small group of volunteers decided to sit there and watch, long enough to prove that the birds were already coming through whether the geography made sense or not.
After the Deck
For anyone making a morning of it, there's now a reason to stick around Fort Washington past the last hawk sighting. Academy Grill, from the team behind Fine Line Dining, opened this summer at 424 South Bethlehem Pike in Fort Washington, just a short drive from the park entrance, and recently expanded from dinner-only service to lunch as well. It's a small addition to the neighborhood, but it fits the rhythm of a hawk watch weekend better than most people would guess, close enough to swing by after a morning on the deck without adding much to the drive home.
None of this requires planning a trip. If you already live near Fort Washington State Park, the count starts tomorrow and runs straight through the end of October, free, on a schedule that doesn't change, staffed by people who'll answer questions if you walk up with none of your own. Bring binoculars if you have them. If you don't, someone on the deck almost certainly will.
For more on what's happening around the neighborhoods we cover, including Fort Washington, Ambler, and the rest of Montgomery County, the Sean Ryan Team keeps a running list of local guides. And if you're weighing a move in or around this part of Montgomery County down the line, get your free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
