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Other stories in "Fall"

• Next weekend
  You'll find war and peace in the countryside.
• Best bets for the weekend
  In fall, everyone's on the move.
• This weekend
  Drink wine, ride a bike or pumpkin.
• Home of horsepower
  In Wisconsin, see where race cars, snowmobiles, outboards and motorcycles were born.
• Scenery in the studios
  On autumn art tours, treasure hunters strike gold (and orange and red).
• Follow a wine trail
  On fall winery tours, sample fruits of the harvest.
• Big birds on the move
  On the Mississippi, tundra swans and bald eagles are heading south.
• Remember the wrecks
  On Lake Superior, gales of November bring haunting memories.
• Join the fun
  With an outdoors club, make friends, see new places and save money.
• Culture in the bluffs
  Follow musicians to four nooks on the Mississippi.
• All quiet up north
  Like the leaves, room rates have dropped.
• 10 trails to ride in fall
  Here's where to get your fill of flora, fauna and fall colors.
• On the ropes in Lanesboro
  Try walking a high wire on Halloween.
• Head toward the (twinkling) lights
  At Christmas, tourist destinations pull out all the stops.
• Save on the ski hills
  Get a deal now on a season pass.
• Ghouls ahoy
  On Great Lakes, two haunted ships are spoiling for a fright.
• Hot tip/A different North Shore
  Didn't reserve for fall-color season? Thunder Bay has rooms.

Eyes on the skies

On bluffs and ridges, it's time to watch the hawk migration.

In September and October, hawks fill the skies, swooping down from northern forests and prairies by the thousands.

Experienced birders wait for them on the shores of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, counting raptors overhead and banding those they can catch.

That's a great opportunity for amateur birders to see a raptor up close. And, unlike eagles and most other birds, they're best viewed in the middle of the day.

In Duluth, raptors are funneled over Hawk Ridge by the vast expanses of Lake Superior, and birders can follow the hawks for several minutes as they pass overhead.

Hawk Weekend is Sept. 16-18, with field trips and interpretive programs, but naturalists are on hand every day through October, explaining the migration and offering free weekend programs and hiking tours.

Some hawks are caught and banded; visitors who "adopt'' the raptors get to release them.

For more on hawk-watching in Duluth, see Hawk heaven.

Farther west on Lake Superior, Brockway Mountain Drive on the Keweenaw Peninsula and Whitefish Point Bird Observatory near Sault Ste. Marie are good places to spot hawks; if you're a birder, now is a good time to go on a Circle Tour.

Down on Lake Michigan near Chicago, volunteers conduct a daily Hawk Watch in the north unit of Illinois Beach State Park in Zion, a northern suburb.

From the Great Lakes, raptors use the Mississippi River as a freeway to the south. All of the bluff tops are good places to watch, but one of the best is Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa, high on the bluffs above Marquette.

Its HawkWatch Weekend is Oct. 1-2 and includes a hike, raptor demonstrations and hawk banding catch and release.

For more on Effigy Mounds and fall in northeast Iowa, see One fall swoop. 

To find more good hawk-watching sites, check with the Hawk Migration Association of North America.

Last updated on September 14, 2011