Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

Last week, on September 30, Duluth birder Ezra Hosch reported thousands of warblers passing by his place on Park Point—he said they were averaging about 100 per minute. That same day, the counters at Hawk Ridge tallied 1,394 warblers. Migration the next day, October 1, was even huger at the Ridge— between 7 am and 6:45 pm, the counters counted 4,115 Yellow-rumped Warblers and 10,946 American Robins. On October 2, they tallied another 508 Yellow-rumps and 2,947 robins. And more than 2,000 robins flew past Hawk Ridge on October 5.

It’s truly astonishing to see so many birds streaming past, but they do it quietly, so most locals don’t notice such a big migration event is even happening. During the 1980s, I was lucky enough to serve as one of the counters at what we called “Dawn Dickey Duty,” enumerating the songbird migration at the Lakewood Pumping Station. We had a lot of superb counting days, but the biggest of all was Saturday, October 1, 1988, when I happened to be the counter on duty.

The last week of September that year was gloomy and wet and a cold front moved in on Friday. When I headed up to the pumping station before dawn, the dark, overcast sky looked ominous—I expected to get rained out. Cars driving along the Scenic Highway had their lights on for over an hour after the sun ostensibly rose.

I got there at about 7:00 (On the data sheet I wrote down 6 am CST, or “Bird Time,” because birds don’t use Daylight Savings Time.) This gave me a few minutes to spare before official sunrise at 7:07. I pulled out my weather radio to listen to and jot down the hourly data. Some warblers were already making seeping sounds overhead. At precisely 7:07, I started my count, already having to scramble because robins were flying inland along the ridge. They couldn’t be called flocks—they were winging past in long, continuous streams from as far northeast as I could see to as far southwest.

I normally used a dot system for keeping track of individual migrants. Whenever there were sizeable flocks, I’d write down numbers like 50 or 100—but now I was writing down numbers like 2,000 and 2,500! Some counters are good at counting a section of a flock and estimating the full size—I always tried to count by ones or at worst, by twos. This time, I was counting some big groups by fives and tens.

My brain was spinning, and the numbers continued to build. I was getting most of the robins cruising over the ridge line to the north, but then I realized that the sky overhead was also streaming with them. I searched for the beginning of that flock, but it extended beyond the horizon. After I counted thousands, I rushed back to scanning the ridge line—robins were still cruising there nonstop, too, plus I had to keep track of thousands of warblers and the odd Sharp-shinned Hawk or American Kestrel. I missed an awful lot of birds, but I counted an awful lot, too, ending the first hour with 7,133, and the birds kept coming.

Being a Saturday, Kim Eckert was leading a local bird trip that morning. I don’t think I’ve ever been as relieved to see anyone as I was when his group showed up about an hour into the count. One of the participants immediately took over my count sheet—that was such a relief! I was only in my 30s, but focusing my eyes back and forth between the horizon and a sheet of paper in my hand was wearying.

Kim counted robins along the ridge–he’d call out things like “Two thousand robins. Do you have those 300 warblers? 2 Sharpies. 3,000 robins. 900 warblers over the tower.” I tallied his birds between counting warblers along the ridge and everything overhead. We counted a greater percentage of the birds this way, but after 3 hours Kim had to leave, and I soloed for the last hour. By this time my eyes were seeing specks everywhere, and my brain was reeling with quantification. But just before I went completely bonkers, a Peregrine Falcon circled right over my head at close range half a dozen times, drawing my eyes from the robin specks like a magnet. After a magical minute, he tipped his wing at me and lit out for the territory. Refreshed, I turned again to the robins.

All in all, we counted 95,948 migrants in five hours that morning—by far the all-time record for the pumphouse count—62,707 robins, 29,330 warblers, and a smattering of Lapland Longspurs, Pine Siskins, crows, ravens, Canada Geese, and Bald Eagles. It was frustrating to realize that I missed so many–if Kim could have stayed the whole time, we would surely have broken 100,000.

When I got home, still in a numerical daze, I walked smack into a bag of sunflower seeds in the garage. Sweeping them into a dustpan, I reached 738 before I realized I was still counting.