Else Nielsen Magagnato Greenstone, 73, an environmental educator and authority on the migration of hawks and eagles, died on August 11 after a long illness.
She made significant contributions to migration studies during her 35 years as a volunteer with the New Jersey Audubon Society, and was responsible for teaching conservation and raptor biology to thousands of school children and countless other visitors to the Montclair Hawk Watch. She was one of the first women in the United States to conduct hawk migration counts.
Her extraordinary life reads like a fairy tale. Orphaned at the age of 18 in her native Copenhagen, Denmark, she fell in love with Venice during a trip with girlfriends and moved there in 1967. Not knowing the language or anyone there, Else was able to find work at the Danish Consulate and also with an Italian family, where she cared for three sisters. Her Italian “parents,” the late Bruno and Gianna Magagnato (101), adopted her into their family.
She met her husband Wayne when the train they were traveling in derailed near Nuremberg, Germany. They wed a year later under the Barnegat Lighthouse, and she passed away on their 48th wedding anniversary.
Always a lover of nature and birds, but without any formal training, a visit to New Jersey Audubon’s Montclair Hawk Watch in 1981 – on a day when over 10,000 Broad-winged hawks were observed – led to a lifetime devoted to studying birds of prey and teaching about their migration and conservation. Many of the interns who worked under her mentorship went on to follow careers in biology and ornithology.
One of her often-cited observations exemplifies Else’s spirit:
One need only look at a child’s face beaming at the sight of a soaring Bald Eagle or the glorious colors of an American Kestrel to realize that while the count itself is important, it is the shared experience of the beauty of these birds and the mystery of migration that is at the core of the Montclair Hawk Watch. While sharing in the quest of the Autumnal wingspan, we reach out for an increased knowledge and a growing awareness of the plight of the birds of prey . . .
For 35 years, she spent nearly every day observing and recording the migration of hawks during Fall and Spring in the skies over Montclair. Else and her husband Wayne, a retired environmental attorney, traveled to many parts of the globe to observe migration, including five trips to the Rio de Rapaces project in Vera Cruz, Mexico, site of the largest raptor migration in the Western Hemisphere; southern Spain, Sweden and Denmark, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, and Cape May.
In addition to her work at the Montclair Hawk Watch, Else served as President of the Montclair Bird Club. Her work in conservation and raptor education has been recognized and honored by the Hawk Migration Association of North America, New Jersey Audubon and the Montclair Bird Club.
She leaves behind her husband Wayne, of Cranford; nephews John Nielsen and Frank Castella, and their families, of Denmark; sisters Lucia and Roberta Magagnato of Mestre-Venice, Italy, and their families; brothers-in-law Sam Greenstone, of Woodland Hills, California, and Jay Greenstone, of Livingston, New Jersey, and their families; and sisters Susan Schell, of Ohio, Joan Castine and Barbara Schwartz, of Florida, and their families.
