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Project Noah Nature School
Accipiter striatus
These tiny hawks are fast and agile fliers. Males are smaller than females as is true with most raptors. Tails are long, wings short and broad. They are a dark gray/bluish above with rust barring on the breast.
These hawks are widespread across the North American continent. They nest in deep forests.
These small, fast-flying, agile hawks feed on small birds. They dash through the forest hoping to surprise their prey. These photos were taken during a mist-netting session. The birds were banded and then released to continue their migration at Hawk Ridge. During migrations the birds tend to avoid flying over Lake Superior and winds can funnel large numbers of raptors along the ridgeline above Duluth, Minnesota. I've seen kettles containing hundreds of broad-wing, redtails, and sharp-shinned hawks from this vantage place. On one day over 100,000 hawks passed this ridge.
Spotted on Oct 7, 2013
Submitted on Oct 21, 2013
6 Comments
Love how it is looking at the captor.
When I was there a story kept running through my mind, one written by Loren Eisley about an experience of capturing a kestrel and then releasing it. Here is a link to the story: http://people.tribe.net/8a1666c0-7544-41...
Several people, after being given some training, got to release birds, mostly sharp-shinned but one redtail as well. The thing I noticed about them were their grins. Ear to ear grins. They couldn't stop smiling. It was an adventure to be sure and made an indelible mark on them. Plus seeing those big kettles of birds....fascinating...
What a great experience!
This is an annual banding program along the shore of Lake Superior in northeast Duluth. Raptors heading south in the fall get pinched to the west by Lake Superior, which is large enough they prefer not to fly over it. The ridges in this area provide good thermals as well, so it's not unusual to have large numbers of birds flying through this spot to take advantage of thermals and to avoid the lake. One day over a 100,000 broad-winged hawks transited the counting station located here. This makes it an ideal place to mist net raptors and band them. The banding, as one might expect, is used to determine migratory paths, wintering areas, longevity, etc. The birds are captured, banded, details noted, and then released. Usually this occurs over just a few minutes. The group doing this, however, sometimes permits visitors to release the birds for a small fee, which helps fund this mostly volunteer effort.
Beautiful. What's the story behind these captured birds?