This is a belated report since I thought it had sent on Sunday ... There was a mass migration event along the Duluth-Superior lakeshore on Sunday April 12th, including 34,000 American Robins, plus smaller numbers of Rusty Blackbirds, Common Grackles, Pine Siskins, Purple Finches, and Northern Flickers (low hundreds of each), and a few Common Redpolls, Yellow-rumped Warblers, and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Although I have seen migration of this magnitude in fall, this day was so amazing because all the birds were so low and close, at tree height, with a continuous river of songbirds from sunrise until nearly noon. Raptor migration was equally impressive with 1083 Red-tailed Hawks counted including 9 dark morph Westerns, plus 676 Sharp-shinned Hawks, 442 Turkey Vultures, 158 Bald Eagles, 24 Rough-legs, 12 Northern Harriers, 3 American Kestrels, 2 Merlins, 1 Peregrine Falcon, 1 Osprey, 1 Northern Goshawk, and 1 Swainson's Hawk. With two successive days of very strong south winds, this is probably the best landbird flight I have ever seen here in spring:). Smaller numbers (but still impressive) continued on Monday (eg, over 5,000 robins and 289 flickers).
Karl Bardon Duluth | ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
