The Hawk Ridge fall 2015 season ended on November 30th, where we count all birds seen migrating each fall in Duluth. The totals this season were amazing, including over 76,000 raptors and over 500,000 non-raptors! This is the highest raptor count since 2004, and the highest non-raptor count ever, surpassing last year's record count of 358,000 birds by nearly 150,000 birds! To put some of our numbers in perspective, note that our single best day ever occurred this fall on 1 September 2015 when 91,667 non-raptors were seen, which is more birds than the entire first season in 2007 when I started trying to count all the birds that pass Hawk Ridge, essentially by myself. Now these same counts take an entire team of observers, so I am deeply indebted to the skills of fellow counters Alex Lamoreaux, Kaija Gahm, Steve Kolbe and many others who make these impressive totals a reality. Many seasonal and daily records were set for a variety of birds this fall, but the most relevant to the upcoming winter season is the record invasion of over 67,000 Common Redpolls counted passing through Duluth. I prepared a season summary with photos that can be viewed at the Hawk Ridge blog (http://hawkridgeblog.blogspot.com)
Karl Bardon Count Director Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
