Every Sunday morning WCCO's Laura Oakes shares a little of what's going right in our world on her show, "Laura's Good News." This weekend she takes us to Duluth for a little hawk watching.
The nonprofit Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory on the city's east end draws telescope-toting raptor enthusiasts from all over the world...especially in the Fall when the birds are migrating to South America. Why? It has a little something to do with a big lake called Superior.
"They're not very likely to fly over big water. No place to land...nothing to eat...no thermals to help them fly. It's just a dumb idea. So they go around, and that funnels them right straight through here, which makes Hawk Ridge one of the nation's best hawk watching spots. We see higher numbers than many, many, many counts across the country," said Margie Menzies, Hawk Ridge's Director of Education.
Menzies says earlier this Fall they documented more than 101,000 broad-winged hawks in one day. A record. So how do Hawk Ridge's observers actually count that many?
"They're soaring birds. They're really well-adapted for soaring. And what they're doing is taking advantage of hot air pockets - or thermals - and they ride those like an elevator. I always tell people when you get to the top of the elevator, what do you do? You get off. And that's when they can count them. When they're streaming off and continuing further South."
Menzies says Hawk Ridge Observatory is a treasure both for locals and bird enthusiasts worldwide. She says the nonprofit is funded through memberships and donations from many dedicated hawk-watchers.
" You know, it's something that people are very passionate about. Birds are so easy to love and they're everywhere. If they disappeared from our world, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves, truthfully."