Shortly after dawn on a September morning, Steve Kolbe scans the skies over Hawk Ridge in eastern Duluth. It’s long before the big push of raptors will ride midday thermals over the ridge, and that’s not why Kolbe, a Hawk Ridge counter, arrived before sunrise.
“There’s an olive-sided flycatcher,” says Kolbe, scanning the hillside with his binoculars. “That’s a cool bird. He’s headed to Central or South America.”
Kolbe shows up early each morning to count non-raptors that flit and dart over the trees on their migrations.
“In the last hour, I’ve counted 161 warblers,” says Kolbe, in his first year of counting at Hawk Ridge.
Down nearer the shore of Lake Superior, Hawk Ridge count director Karl Bardon is doing the same thing, squeezing a small clicker in his hand every time he sees a migrating bird that’s not a raptor.
By midday, both counters will be up at the Hawk Ridge main overlook, counting raptors. But since 2007, Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory has expanded its efforts to count non-raptors.
“Part of the mission of Hawk Ridge is to not only protect birds of prey but all migrating birds in the western Lake Superior region,” said Janelle Long, executive director of Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory. “When Karl came on board as lead counter, that was really a passion of his, to count all birds. We wanted to start documenting that.”
Since as early as the 1980s, Duluth birders, including Laura Erickson, Mike Hendrickson, Kim Eckert and others, have counted non-raptors during the fall migration.
Warblers, nighthawks and other species migrate through Duluth by the thousands each fall, almost unnoticed by most residents. In a two-and-a-half-hour period on Aug. 26, 1990, Hendrickson counted 43,690 nighthawks as they flew over the Lakewood Pumping Station, Erickson reported in her book, “For the Birds.”
The average raptor count at Hawk Ridge in recent years is about 60,000, according to Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory. As many as 250,000-300,000 non-raptors are counted in Duluth each fall, Bardon said.
His interest in birds goes well beyond raptors, he said.
“I’ve always been interested in counting everything,” Bardon said. “Hawks are cool, but I’ve always been into all birds.”
As the sun played among clouds over Lake Superior on that September morning, Kolbe clicked passing warblers without identifying them by species. He clicked robins and bluejays and cedar waxwings, too.
The songbirds, like raptors, are pushed toward Lake Superior by westerly winds. Avoiding the big lake because of its cold waters, which provide little lift, the birds wing through Duluth before continuing south to their wintering grounds in Central or South America.
Warblers are primarily nocturnal migrants, Kolbe said, using constellations or magnetic fields to find their way. They might fly a few hundred miles overnight, then land to rest before dawn, he said. But as soon as the sun rises, for reasons not clearly understood, the warblers usually fly for an hour or two.
“We call it the morning flight,” Kolbe said.
A warbler darted over the treetops just west of the counting platform at Hawk Ridge. Kolbe clicked his counter.
“Probably a Tennessee or a Nashville,” he said.
At a distance, warblers might appear drab and unremarkable. But up close, many are every bit as striking as an osprey or a sharpshin.
“They really are like flying jewels,” Kolbe said.
The birds are nocturnal migrants for several reasons, Kolbe said. Winds typically are not as strong at night. The air is cooler, and songbirds generate heat flapping their wings. And at night they’re less likely to be eaten by predators such as sharp-shinned hawks and merlins.
Counting non-raptors often reveals surprises, Bardon said. Some years, the numbers of a species might be unusually large.
“One year, there were thousands of red crossbills,” Bardon said. “Where are they all coming from? Where are they going? It was off the charts. It seems like every year, something like that happens. It’s just fun to document.”
Such anomalies can inspire research that leads to a better understanding of a species, he said. Kolbe finds such unanswered questions intriguing.
“I think some folks think we have it all figured out what birds in North America do,” he said. “But even with some of the common species, we don’t know everything about what they do. That’s what draws me to this study. What you can learn is unending.”
He put his binoculars on an incoming bird.
“Redstart,” he said.
The winds, 9 mph out of the west northwest at dawn, had already increased to 17 mph by 7:30 a.m. The little birds would be flying for another hour or so.
By midday, perhaps, as sunshine built thermals along Hawk Ridge, the big birds would begin moving in earnest. Sharpshins. Broadwings. Eagles.
Big birds. Little birds. All of them following the ancient rhythm of the seasons.
