Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, on the Skyline Parkway, Duluth

Sunday was a blue sky, and warm day.  I walked down to the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center to pick up some brochures.  The Visitor Center is just across the bridge, and it was being busy letting boats in and out of the harbor.

I had to wait for this sail boat to pass under the bridge, before I could cross over to the Visitor Center, and before I was off of the bridge on the far side, the bridge operator signaled that it was raising again for another boat.  While I was inside of the Visitors Center, the bridge returned down to allow cars and pedestrians to pass, and raised and lowered a third time for another boat to pass.  I read that this bridge raises an average of 20 times a day, and a lot of those times is for small boats over 20ft tall, above the water.

The touring that we chose to do, was the Skyline Parkway Scenic Byway drive, and perhaps the Hawk Ridge Bird observatory, that was located on the northern most part of the Scenic Drive.  There must have been flooding or something really harsh last winter, because the Skyline Parkway had sections of road closed that extended for 2-4 miles in a section.  Using the GPS map display, we tried to circumvent the closed sections of road, only to find that the cross roads were closed also.  The Scenic Drive is 25 miles long, south to north, and I think that we must have drove over 50 miles zig-zaging back and forth, trying to find an open section of road to drive.  We only were able to find two roadside markers, on the open sections of road, and this wide picture is a view of the lake in the distance.

After we had worked our way to the northern part of the Scenic Drive, the road changed to gravel once we entered the Hawk Ridge Nature Preserve.  We found the road congested with parked cars and many people walking about and standing in the road, most were looking up and hardly anyone was looking for traffic.  We didn’t try to push through, as there was a lot of signs before warning of the congestion.  We made our way to the far end parking area, and walked back into the crowd.  The picture of the sign with everyone behind it looking and pointing a different direction, was normal throughout our visit.  The folks on the observation deck were charged with keeping a tally of the birds passing by, I was told that they each were assigned a quadrant of sky to watch.  The tally board has a up to the hour count of the larger birds counted by the official observers.

The signs explain how the birds use this ridge, all along Lake Superior, because of the naturally occurring thermals for hundreds of miles, and where different species are most likely to be seen.

These two wide views show the road area just as it was when we drove through, everybody looking up and away.  The little trailer had snacks and drinks for sale, and T-shirts.  Anne-Marie and I both have a new shirt.  The lady watching over the vending trailer was quite interested in Anne-Marie’s and my travels, and encouraged me to include a picture of Erik Bruhnke in the blog.

Erik Bruhnke was in the road directing the folks left and right to different raptors and his sight must be a lot better than mine, because what looked like a speck or dot in the sky to me was a specific species of hawk or falcon to him.  He didn’t seem to dwell on a individual bird for more that a few seconds, as he would find another to point out.  Erik was difficult to get a picture of, because of his enthusiasm for showing another find to the group, he wasn’t still for long.  I looked at a blog of his and Facebook page, and he even provides a guide service for serious bird watching.

Margie was showing the group a raptor that had just been captured in a net.  They catch, band and release many birds, and through this system they can judge ages of the birds and distances traveled. 

The banding of the smaller birds was being done by these two, and it was explained that there were several netting stations close by.  All bird handlers were very cautious in how they held the birds. 

Anne-Marie and I didn’t escape another road closure before we got off of the ridge, and we had to detour another 6 miles before we got back into town.  This old building  with the clock tower is the old Duluth City High School.  The building is huge and massive, and being made of stone it was difficult to heat in the winter.  The building was last used as a High School in 1972, and the primary reason is believed to be that it took 8 tons of coal a day to heat the building in cold weather.

Last night Anne-Marie and I walked over to the bridge, and down Lake Ave.  and this is a view of the bridge at night.