Eighth Weekend of Banding 2022

Hello Everyone,

This is my eighth report of the 2022 banding season, covering the weekend of October 22nd, 2022.

Saturday, October 22nd

Trudi and I met Rick and Chuck at Hawk Harbor around 9:00 am Saturday morning. Nancy and Todd could not be there since they had things to take care of at home. The weather forecast for the North Shore called for clear skies, warm temps, and strong winds from the East-north-east (not the best for seeing hawks migrating). We set up the banding station anyway and started scanning the skies for hawks at 9:30 am.

Around 10:00 am, Sue, Theo, and Maddi stopped up to see us. Sue's dad (Theo's grandfather) is Del Hogen. Del was one of the founding members of the Minnesota Falconers Association. Theo and Sue have been coming up to the blind for many years, but this was Maddi's first time up and we hoped she would bring us some good luck, as most first timers do. We all settled into the blind and started searching for hawks.

Almost no little birds were moving and we hadn't seen any hawks at all. However, at 10:20, Maddi's good luck kicked in, and we saw a big bird chasing something down by the barn at the other end of the field. It was big and brown and had a long tail. At first, we thought it might be a harrier. It quit chasing whatever it was after and started to ring up in a soar. Rick started luring and it immediately "locked on"! It charged straight at us just above the draw and as it got closer, we could tell it was a very big Northern Goshawk! In typical goshawk fashion, it barreled straight into the front net with no hesitation! Maddi and the rest of us got a front row seat to a perfect raptor capture! We took the gos out of the net, banded it, and took a bunch of photos. Since it was Maddi's first time at the blind, she got to release the gos. This was our first Northern Goshawk of what has been a very slow season.

After the exciting event with the gos, we hardly saw any other hawks moving through. A few eagles, a couple red-tails and a few shins, but none of them came in. By early afternoon, boredom had set in and our guests decided to head into Duluth for some sightseeing. The rest of us stuck it out until 3:00, when we also had had enough and decided to close down the blind.

We did get one other visitor to the blind before closing down. It seems that if a Pileated woodpecker comes close to the blind, it mistakes the sound of the lure line movement for a bug in the bark of the tree that the line is attached to. This has happened a couple of times before over the years and has resulted in two of the woodpeckers getting caught in our nets. Trying to get a Pileated out of a mist net with no gloves is not a fun ordeal! However, this one examined the line very carefully, let us get some photos, and then moved on up the tree and flew off into the woods behind us.

After closing down the banding station for the night, Trudi, Rick, Chuck, and I went in to have supper at Culver's in Two Harbors.

We got a total of 1 bird and no bounce-outs on Saturday.

1 Northern Goshawk

Sunday, October 23rd

Sunday morning, the four of us headed back up to open the blind just as the sun was coming up over the lake. What a beautiful way to start a day! The weather forecast said the skies would be clear and the wind would be not as strong, but still out of the East-north-east. We were all set up and ready to go by 8:00 am.

At 9:00, Eric, an annual visitor to the blind, came up. His mom Nancy usually comes with him, but she had moved to Arizona. We settled in and started looking for migrating raptors. To say it was "SUPER SLOW" would have been an understatement! We saw only about ten raptors that morning. They were all way off in the distance and not interested in us. It was so slow we decided to close down early at 11:00 am. Just before we were about to take down the nets at 10:55, a young Red-tailed hawk came into the field over the barn. It started circling up in a thermal that was coming off the field, but got closer to us as it went up. On one of its turns about half way up the field, it spotted our lure and leveled off. It made a beautiful long slanting stoop, with legs coming down at the last minute, right into the front net. This was one of the most aggressive birds we have had come in this season. It footed and bit Chuck and then took a nip out of my hand while I was trying to help Chuck band it. We took some photos and had Chuck chuck-it, as he had it under control and was now wearing a protective glove. We passed out bandages all around and closed down at 11:00 am.

We got a total of 1 bird and no bounce-outs on Sunday.

1 Red-tailed hawk

2 total birds for the weekend.

63 birds total for the season.

Please help hawks by supporting:

Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory ( https://www.hawkridge.org/ )

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

National Eagle Center ( https://www.nationaleaglecenter.org/ )

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

The Raptor Center ( https://raptor.umn.edu/ )

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

Keep your eyes on the skies!