Sixth Weekend of Banding 2024

Hello Everyone,

Sunday, October 6th

The weather did not look good for banding on Saturday, so Trudi, Rick, and I decided to band on Sunday and Monday instead. Winds for those days were predicted to be strong out of the West-North-West. We drove up Saturday afternoon so we could get an early start on Sunday morning. We had the banding station set up and ready to go at 8:00 am. The winds were already howling pretty strong and birds were starting to move.

Around 9:00 am, we had two shins come in at once, but we had the nets set pretty hard due to the strong winds, and they both bounced out! Aaargh!!! However, that started a great migration day! Soon the sky was filled with raptors and migrating song birds!

Shins started coming in from all directions! We caught our first bird of the weekend, a young female shin, at around 10:00 am, and then caught five more shins within the next hour! That rush of shins was topped off with an adult Red-tailed Hawk that saw our lure from way out over the farm, and made a long slanting stoop into the front net! We banded it, took some photos, and Rick released it.

Brynn, who has been a bander for The Raptor Resource Project and now lives in Duluth, stopped up at noon. By then, the sky was filled with hawks! Many came in like they meant business, only to chicken out at the last second and pull up into the trees above the blind. We had another shin bounce out around 1:00 pm, and then caught two more before a Cooper's Hawk came powering down from the North! We banded it, took some photos, and I got to let that one go.

We had another shin bounce out right after we released the Cooper's Hawk. But then we caught seven more shins between 2:00 pm and 5:00 pm, when we closed down for the day! This was our best day so far this season! When the winds push the birds down toward the lake shore, the numbers that pass over are astounding!

We got a total of 17 birds and 4 bounce-outs on Sunday.

15 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 1 Cooper's Hawk, and 1 Red-tailed Hawk.

Monday, October 7th

The winds stayed strong all night, but died off on Monday morning as we headed out to the blind. We opened the banding station at 7:45 am, and had a shin hit the back net and bounce out two minutes later! We caught our first bird of the day, an adult female shin that came in from the owl, just after 8:00 am. We caught three more adult shins in the next hour and then had a shin bounce out around 9:30 am.

With the winds dying off and huge thermals rising from the fields, most of the migrating raptors soared up almost out of sight. A few hunting shins were still hanging at treetop level and we caught one more young male shin and another adult female shin before closing down at 12:30 pm.

We got a total of 6 birds and 2 bounce-outs on Monday.

6 Sharp-shinned Hawks.

23 birds for the weekend.

57 total birds for the season.

Please help hawks by supporting:

Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory (www.hawkridge.org)

Midwest Peregrine Society (https://midwestperegrine.umn.edu/)

National Eagle Center (www.nationaleaglecenter.org)

Raptor Resource Project (https://www.raptorresource.org/)

The Raptor Center (www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu)

Twin Cities Metro Osprey Watch (http://ospreywatch.blogspot.com/)

Keep your eyes on the skies!