The morning broke clear and crisp. Another picture perfect autumn morning in one of my most favorite places. Stepping from my truck I could see the sun was just about to emerge over watery horizon of Lake Superior. Hiking a short distance up a trail in the woods, than scrambling up some large rocks, I reached a small clearing which gave me an unobstructed view of the “big lake” just as the sun breached the horizon. Standing there in the cool morning air I could see my breath and now feel the warmth of the first rays of sun warming my face.

Standing there I let my mind wonder back in time to the hundreds of times I stood in this exact spot and watched the sun rise. I am thinking about the past 20 plus years I’ve spent coming to Hawk Ridge in Duluth Minnesota. As a biologist this is a one of the top spots in the entire country to witness a high volume of migrating hawks. As a wildlife photographer the ridge, as many of us call it, is unsurpassed for photography.

I have so many incredible memories from the past couple decades of good friends and great photography at the ridge. This time I am here not to photograph by to give a talk about birds at the Hawk Ridge weekend celebration. Hundreds of bird watchers from around the nation gather at the ridge for a weekend to share knowledge and reestablish friendships.

Last night Professor Jerry Niemi presented a wonderful over view of the past 39 years of hawk banding at the ridge. For those of you who don’t know what hawk banding is, let me explain. Migrating hawks are lured into traps where researchers grab the birds without causing any harm. A series of measurements are taken, the bird is aged and sexed, and a metal band containing a unique identifying number is affixed to the birds leg. All of this takes just a few minutes and the bird is release back into the wild and it continues on its way south. Meanwhile at another location, hawk counters are watching and counting the total number of birds that fly over the ridge.

Professor Niemi pulled together some amazing statistics from all of this banding and watching of hawks. Over the past 39 years that banding and counting has taken place at the ridge, over 2 million hawks have been counted passing over the ridge on their migration south. That averages to about 80,000 birds per season. This includes twenty seven different raptor species; of these, twenty three species have been caught and banded.

From the year 1972 to 2010 over 100,000 individual hawks have been caught and banded at a separate location away from the hawk counters and watchers along with the crowds of people that come to witness this autumn spectacle. Tucked away back in the woods the hawk banders toil away catching hawks. Of the 100,000 hawks that have been caught, 60,000 have been Sharp-shinned hawks. If you are not familiar with the Sharp-shinned hawk, it is a small woodland hawk that is the second most common hawk species to fly over Duluth’s Hawk Ridge.

At this point you might be asking yourself why they band the hawks. The short answer is research. The only way to obtain any kind of info, such as where the hawks go, how long does it take to get there, how long do the birds live, etc, comes from banding. Now here is the sobering news. Of the 60,000 Sharp-shins that have been banding at the ridge over the past four decades, only 327 birds with bands have been recovered. This is a normal recovery rate for bird banding, but it illustrates the difficulty in obtaining good information when doing field research. A huge effort must be made to obtain even the littlest amounts of information.

The true dedication of these people who band and count the birds at the ridge have contributed mountains of information that would otherwise would not be known about many raptor species. This group of amazing people goes unnoticed by the general public but their work contributes greatly to the overall scientific knowledge. My hat goes off to these marvelous people. Until next time

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the world to study and photograph wildlife. He can followed on twitter and face book and at www.naturesmart.com