With little fanfare -- and no photos -- banders at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth banded their 100,000th raptor on Sept. 15.
Lead bander David Evans said he knew he was close to the 100,000 mark. He had told his assistants the night before that they would likely band their 100,000th bird the following day.
"It was a baby girl sharpshin," said Evans, 61, who has been banding at Hawk Ridge since 1972.
That means the bird was an immature sharpshin, hatched earlier this year somewhere in northern Minnesota or in Canada. Raptors are trapped in soft, nearly invisible "mist" nets in the woods far from the main overlook at Hawk Ridge, which is on Skyline Parkway in East Duluth.
Hawk Ridge is one of the leading banding sites in the United States, Evans said. Other leading sites are Cape May Point in New Jersey and Hawk Cliff on Lake Erie. At Hawk Ridge, Evans and his assistants band about 2,700 raptors and owls each fall.
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Evans, who goes by the nickname "Fud," first came to Hawk Ridge out of college. He built a makeshift shack at the site and began banding hawks for free. Now in his 39th year, he long ago became a paid employee.
The banding shack has been improved only slightly through the years. Most of the cylinders in which hawks are placed to keep them calm until they can be banded are the same ones Evans has been using for 39 years. They're made from two beer cans taped together end-to-end.
The weather has been better this fall than the past couple of years for banding, with lots of westerly winds. But banding numbers haven't measured up to some past years, Evans said. Evans fears for some raptor populations.
"I think the sharpshin population is taking a hit," he said. "We've had a lot of good wind and not many birds on it at all. I think it's a lack of food. There's been such a songbird decline."
Sharpshins, the most commonly banded raptors at Hawk Ridge, feed primarily on songbirds.
So far this fall, about 39,000 hawks have been counted at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve, and the migration will continue into November. An average of 94,000 raptors passes over Hawk Ridge each fall.
