Throughout his life, you might have found Marek Plater '63 scouting for hawks atop the Kittatinny Ridge in Pennsylvania or overlooking the Arizona desert with a hawk or falcon perched on his gloved, outstretched arm. These days, you can find Plater -- a federally licensed master falconer and avid bird-bander -- at his island home in Maine, where he monitors the local kestrel population. 

Born and raised on a farm in Kintnersville, PA, Plater stumbled upon a career in pool construction and architecture after realizing wall street wasn’t the right fit for a country boy. He began by building pools for Sylvan Pools, moved into construction management, and eventually ventured into selling and designing pools for 40+ years. In fact, anyone who has ever enjoyed a dip in the Moravian Academy pool on the Merle-Smith Campus can thank Plater, as he designed it in the late 1980s. 

One of the best parts of the pool industry is that it allowed Plater to indulge his true curiosity: falconry and bird banding. A falconer introduced Plater to the world of hawks at around the same time he began his pool career. In the summer months, he worked non-stop for seven days a week. And then, come October, his time belonged to bird banding and falconry. 

Raptor banding refers to trapping, tagging, and releasing birds to track their migration patterns and life span. Plater estimates that he has banded thousands of birds throughout his lifetime. "I think the biggest day we had was with Sharp-shinned Hawks one October, and we banded 136 in one day. That was memorable," he says. 

For decades, Plater was also heavily involved in falconry -- trapping juvenile hawks and training them to hunt wild game. "These are birds that were young, wild birds when I first got them," he explains. He recounts the bond he had with a hawk he had flown for 18 years. "I would be the highest thing in the desert, and he’d come just out of nowhere and land on my head because that’s where he could see things better."

Falconers may train the birds, but Plater knows that the learning process works both ways. "Every bird is different," he says. "Not only every Red Tailed, Harris' or Goshawk, but every species is different as to how you train them and how they respond to that. That was the learning process even to this day." 

One of the most memorable events of his falconry years was his invitation and attendance to an international falconer's gathering in Austria, which was headquartered in an eleventh-century castle. 

Before indulging his curiosity and finding his life-long passion for birds of prey, Plater was a student at Moravian Preparatory School. "I will say," begins Plater, "that Moravian was probably the best thing that happened to me at the time to get me to study and get through college." He recounts fond memories of his friends with whom he remains in touch to this day. One memory, in particular, stands out to Plater: the time he and his friends started a junior/senior football game to boost morale. "I just remember that morale was down, and we got together and asked ourselves: What can we do? I can visualize a picture still in my mind of the football game, which really turned out to be something. It was good. It was good for the time."

Now residing in Maine with his wife Julie, Plater's falconry days are behind him but he remains an active raptor-bander, building kestrel nesting boxes in Maine and tagging the young kestrels who are raised in them. "I started doing this kestrel project because the kestrels are really declining throughout the country. They’re in a lot of trouble and a lot of it is because of habitat loss." This year, Plater has already banded 68 young kestrels and close to 400 in the past five years. 

What began as a general curiosity about flying turned into a lifelong adventure of learning and discovery for Plater. "I like to think that it was done for a good purpose," he says. 

If you would like to reconnect with Marek Plater '63, email him at mplater@erols.com.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2020 curiosity issue of the Moravian Academy Journal, which can be found here.