We're down to our last 2 weeks of our fall education and visitor services at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve. We invite you to visit now through October 31st (daily 9am-4pm). The fall colors are peaking and hawks, eagles, and owls are on the move! There are a few slots left for our owl programs, which you can find out more about below. Owl banding, songbird banding, and Sept. education program summaries are featured in this e-news. Keep up with recent news by following us on Facebook and Instagram. You can also check out the live bird migration count totals on Trektellen HERE and HawkCount HERE.
P.S. If you missed our last e-newsletter featuring our September bird migration count and raptor banding summaries, you can view that and older versions by clicking HERE.
Fall Owl Banding Update (Sept. 15th-Oct. 16th)
The 2023 Hawk Ridge Fall Owl Banding season has been a total hoot! Banding operations began on September 15th and will continue through early/mid November. Owl banders have had an excellent time banding, walking the net trails and learning everything about owl banding each night.
September was the month of the Northern Saw-whet Owl, since it was the only species that was banded. 127 Saw-whet’s were banded during the month, this made it the highlight of the month but banders had a few other surprises as well. Two flying squirrels and a tiny Eastern Bat were extracted from the owl mist-nets.
The month of October had a few rainy nights that prevented our banders from banding but the month has been productive in terms of owl numbers. All the Saw-whet’s left their cavities and the real migration began early October. Banders were able to band 750 Saw-whet’s during the first half of the month. The big push of Saw-whet’s began on October 2nd with a total of 56 Saw-whet’s. The push continued October 4th and 6th with 74 and 95 owls respectively. This was just a warm up because on October 7th we had our big Saw-whet day with a total of 156 individuals. This night was truly special since the owls kept coming and the banders kept banding! Another incredible event took place during the night of October 7th as well. We captured our first Long-eared owl of the season. By the end of the night we ended with 12 Long-eared Owls—our season high for this species.
By the numbers! The 2023 owl numbers are on pace to surpass the totals for the previous two banding seasons. 906 owls have been banded as of October 15th. Saw-whet’s are leading the way with 877, followed by 27 Long-eared Owls and 2 Barred Owls. These totals do not include our recaptured owls which have added up to 30 Saw-whet’s so far. As for age distribution of Saw-whet Owls: 425 have been aged as Hatch-Year, 295 were Second-Year, 120 After Hatch Year, and 37 were aged as After-Second Year.
Our team looks forward to banding more Saw-whet’s, Long-eared Owls, the occasional Barred and Great Horned Owls. The team is also hopeful for a Boreal Owl irruption this season—cross your fingers! We look forward to sharing the next owl migration update but in the meantime we’ll continue checking our nets at the Ridge.
By Kevin Garcia Lopez
Owl Bander
September Passerine Banding Summary
.jpg "White-throated Sparrow by K Bardon")
We are having a truly exceptional fall passerine banding season at Hawk Ridge! During September we banded a total of 1,216 new birds to add to our August total of 851, for a season total of 2,067 bird thus far, with October numbers still to be added in for the whole season! What a year! We had 78 recaptures during the month of September making a total of 151 for the season. We were able to band 24 out of the 30 days in September and averaged 50 birds a day for the month! Lots of diversity of birds as well with 5 days having 20 or more species captured through the course of the day. In the first week of September, 4 days had 20 or more species, with 9/4 at 29 species the highest diversity followed by 9/2 at 25 species. But 9/21 also yielded 20 species in the later part of the month.
Warblers once again were the largest proportion of birds banded with 560 warblers banded for 46% of the catch. Thrushes stepped into second this moth with 302 banded for 25% of the bird banded. 110 sparrows for 9% and our later season Kinglets did not disappoint with 79 banded and 6% of the total banded. We had some late captures of some normally early season migrants this year with a Connecticut Warbler on 9/21 making our season total 4 for this year- we don’t usually see this many in the mist nets. We were beginning to think that a Cape May Warbler was out of the question for this year, but finally captured one on 9/26. And the latest usually earlier Warbler was a late adult male Black- throated Blue Warbler on 9/29. It was also a larger than normal sampling of Gray Catbirds this year with 21 caught in September.
Top ten species for the month of September were: in the top spot- Swainson’s Thrushes at 261 caught; #2 was 173 American Redstarts, #3- Magnolia Warblers- 96, #4 White-throated Sparrows- 88, #5- Nashville Warblers- 84, #6 Ruby-crowned Kinglets- 67, #7 Tennessee Warblers- 36, #8 Ovenbirds- 35, #9 and #10 tied with Red-eyed Vireos and Black-capped Chickadees each at 27.
Thanks to all of our passerine banding volunteers - you are all rock stars and we are so happy to have all of you out to help us with this incredible year! But the story isn’t over til' it’s over with the October numbers! Stay tuned they are just around the corner!
By David Alexander and Margie Menzies
Lead Passerine Banders
September Education Summary
The September Fall Education season has been a busy one as always with our outstanding educators sharing the magic that is the fall migration season at Hawk Ridge. You may have seen some familiar faces, if you've visited this fall, as we welcomed back the following naturalist staff from last year: Sara DePew, Julia Luger, Sarah Wood, Jake Behrens, Jamie Tigges, Sophie Richardson, Chris Schnurbusch, Caroline Urban, and Peter Mundale (volunteered in 2022). We welcomed back Gracie Sangmeister and Erik Brunhke to help with Count Interpretation. We also are happy to have Lisa Oakland and Tania Womack (volunteered in 2022) back this season to oversee our visitor services and gift shop, as well as Valerie Slocum continuing to coordinate the Volunteer Program (thank you amazing volunteers!!).
Our new staff include education intern, Cam Citrowske, and 3 new trainees: Marie Chappell, Sarah Needles, and Megan Hanson (all pictured below). The Hawk Ridge traineeship also had an exciting new change this year to a weekly rotation for trainees to spend time and learn in each of our 3 core program areas of bird migration count, bird banding, and education.
We might have had a record low September raptor count at the Ridge this year, but that was not the case on the side of visitors and education programs. A wide spectrum of programs at the Ridge included, preK-12 school groups (public/private/homeschool), college/higher education groups, general public participants of all ages for weekend programs, Hawk Weekend festival field trips and workshops, evening owl programs (general public and small group owl programs), and private programs for other groups, including the last of the Viking cruise programs for the season. And those were just the formal programs! We offered roughly 87 different formal programs in September to nearly 1500 participants.
In addition to all the formal programming, our education staff are engaging with visitors daily at Hawk Ridge. Naturalists provide a variety of informal programs for the general public, such as live bird demonstrations to teach about raptors and our banding research, fun activities for kids to learn about birds at the Kid's Cart, updating and discussing our bird migration count and
numbers at the count board interpretive display, pointing out birds and helping with identification, assisting with binocular use and free rental, sharing recommendations for hikes to take at the Ridge, birding hotspots to check out in the area, and even general questions about birds and Duluth.
Whew- there is plenty going on at Hawk Ridge during the fall migration! Plenty of bird stories yet to tell- hope we will see you in October, when the really large birds soar through!
By Margie Menzies
Education Director
Hawk Weekend Festival 2023 Summary
Our annual Hawk Weekend Festival held September 15-17th was an amazing weekend filled with great weather, great bird migration, and great people. Over 150 people pre-registered for a variety of guided birding field trips, workshops, and programs at Hawk Ridge and around Duluth. Hundreds of other visitors also joined us at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve to view the migration and learn from our education naturalist staff and volunteers. Kettles of Broad-winged Hawks, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Bald Eagles, low-flying kestrels and other birds provided a beautiful spectacle that visitors of all ages and birding abilities enjoyed. A total of over 7,800 raptors (of 11 species) and approx. 26,000 other birds (of nearly 50 species) were counted.
Here's a glimpse of the excitement the counters wrote about on Saturday, September 16th:
A day for the books! A huge thanks to volunteers Stephen Nelson and Russ Edmonds for assisting with the count today. 66 species. 8 warbler sp. numerous woodpeckers, and TONS of finches! 800+ Purple finch and 1100+ Siskin! By far the best bird of the day was a BLACK-BILLED MAGPIE moving down the shore, mixed in with Blue Jays! By the way, 10,540 jays today. The onslaught may never end. 22 Raven, first Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a Red-necked Grebe and 29 Sandhill Crane were other notable migrants. 
Raptors were moving. Potentially the only NW wind this month brought the biggest Broad-winged flight this year. Kettles rolled in from the N and drifted towards the shore. Interestingly, almost all BW activity died by 4pm, with no late day lakeside fallout. 1,211 Sharp-shinned is a season high count so far, as is 281 American Kestrel. Scanning over the lake, dozens of kestrel could be seen at a time all afternoon, and they didn't stop until nearly sunset! The late day falcon flights at the ridge are magical, as soft evening light settles over the farmland falcon, floating south on the last breath of wind.
%20received%202023%20Lifetime%20Achievement%20award%20presented%20by%20G%20Niemi%20(left)%20and%20J%20Long%20(right)%204.JPG?0.4738015504087054 "Laurie Goodrich (center) received 2023 Lifetime Achievement award presented by G Niemi (left) and J Long (right) 4")
Our kick-off evening event was held at the Great Lakes Aquarium with a fun social gathering, informative annual meeting with highlights of Hawk Ridge, and engaging presentation on Broad-winged Hawk research and ecology by the keynote speaker, Dr. Laurie Goodrich. The Hawk Ridge Lifetime Achievement award was presented by Dr. Gerald Niemi to Dr. Laurie Goodrich for her dedication and many accomplishments in the field of raptor research. Thank you Laurie! A 10-year Hawk Ridge service award was presented by Hawk Ridge Board Chair, Jim Sanders, to Ken Gilbertson in appreciation of his time and efforts serving on the Hawk Ridge Board of Directors. Thank you Ken!
It was an overall wonderful weekend with many new and return visitors from around the state and throughout the US (even beyond with students from Lakehead University in Canada and annual visitor friends from Japan)! We enjoyed the camaraderie and stories shared, as we watched the beautiful migration above and birds around us.
Thank you to the wonderful field trip and workshop leaders: Dave Carman, Erik Bruhnke, Laura Erickson, Jackie Fallon, Margie Menzies, Clinton Dexter-Nienhaus, Bill Tefft. Thank you to the Hawk Ridge staff and volunteers for sharing your enthusiasm and passion through research and education! Thank you to all of the festival participants and visitors for joining us and supporting the bird conservation work of Hawk Ridge!
P.S. You can listen HERE to a nice piece put together by KFAI radio that captures the sounds and essence of our festival weekend celebrating the migration and bringing together people and birds.
Whoo doesn’t like owls? From large to small, seasonal travelers, and hardy residents, Minnesota hosts a fascinating diversity of owls, with some crazy habits, and some hauntingly beautiful sounds in the night. Join us this fall to learn about the Hawk Ridge owl banding research through one of our public evening owl programs or schedule a small group owl program. Click HERE for more info.
Saturday 10/21 Owl Program:
General public evening owl program on Saturday Oct. 21st at 8pm
Tickets ALMOST SOLD OUT! Call 218-428-6209 between 9am-4pm to check availability and register by phone.
$10 member/student or $15 nonmember
Small group owl programs (up to 8): offered now through Oct. 31 (Tues. or Thurs-Sat. evenings) with date/time to be arranged by sending an email to owls@hawkridge.org. $40 member/student or $50 nonmember.
International Birding Trip Update
Ecuador - Birding the Choco-Andes Region
February 25th - March 5th, 2024
(Trip is FULL - watch for our next trip in summer or fall 2024!)
Please contact Hawk Ridge Education Director, Margie Menzies, mmenzies@hawkridge.org with future birding trip ideas and to be first on the list to know!
Hawk Migration Association of North America
SAVE THE DATE! November 7-10, 2024
.jpg "HMANA 50th Logo FINAL (white background)")
Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory is happy to announce that the Hawk Migration Association of North America (HMANA) is holding their 50th anniversary conference here in Duluth, MN next year in Nov. 2024! Hawk Ridge is helping host and will keep you posted on details. You can check out the conference link HERE!
Thank You for Your Support!
Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory thanks all of our supporters. We appreciate you! As a nonprofit organization, we are primarily funded by individual gifts to put our bird migration research and education programs in action. Below are some of the ways you can help us keep sharing the magic of the bird migration!
Support Hawk Ridge by Shopping!
The best place to get all your Hawk Ridge gear is at our fall season gift shop trailer at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve daily 9am-4pm between September 1 - October 31. If you're not able to come up to Hawk Ridge this fall, you can also check out some of our online shopping options with some of our merchandise.
Big Frog (direct ship or pick up at Duluth store)
Bonfire (direct ship)
The Mug Experience (direct ship)
Thank you Whole Foods Co-Op Duluth!
A special thanks to Duluth Whole Foods Co-Op and members for the Community Giving round-up program in support of Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory! As the September recipient and through your generosity, we received over $5,500 in round-up donations! THANK YOU!
Become A Member Today!
If you're already a member of Hawk Ridge, we sincerely appreciate your support! THANK YOU! If you're not a member and have enjoyed your experience with Hawk Ridge, we invite you to renew or join as a Hawk Ridge member today! Our memberships and donations help drive our bird conservation research and education programs. You can check out our exciting membership benefits and join or renew online HERE!
Simply Donate
You can always simply donate online by clicking HERE or by mailing a check made out to Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, P.O. Box 3006, Duluth, MN 55803.
%20presenting%20Ken%20Gilbertson%2010-year%20board%20service%20award%202023%203.JPG "J Sanders (right) presenting Ken Gilbertson 10-year board service award 2023 3")
.jpg "Hawk Ridge staff through the decades with Dr. Laurie Goodrich (center)")
No comments:
Post a Comment