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Hawks and butterflies wing south

Betsy Bloom/Daily News photos

A bird and butterflies provided the week’s highlights in watching for species headed south through Dickinson County.

Both seem unlikely migrants — the bird was not the usual waterfowl or song variety, the butterflies not the much-heralded monarchs, although more than a few of those floated through the area as well, probably taking advantage of a favorable air flow.

But broad-winged hawks have become migration celebrities, and they are a spectacle, filling the sky at some prime viewing sites with thousands of soaring, swirling raptors riding the thermals as they move en masse from the forests of Canada and northern and eastern United States to winter in Central and South America.

People will travel across states in September to be at such locations as Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth, Minn., which at peak fall migration has counted more than 100,000 broad-winged hawks — in a single day.

But the winds last Saturday were kind enough to bring a “kettle” — the term for a broad-winged hawk group in the air — with what I would estimate was several hundred birds circling over a hill on the east side of Six Mile Lake. As I headed to Iron Mountain, another group could be seen just west of the Randville Bar & Grill on M-95.

Broad-winged hawks might number in the thousands as they migrate from the U.S. and Canada to winter in Central and South America.

The Upper Peninsula actually has an ideal hawk-watching site in Brockway Mountain on the Keweenaw Peninsula, but it’s better known for seeing raptors on their spring journey north as they follow the finger of land before making the flight across Lake Superior.

The painted lady butterflies, too, made themselves easy to see, drawn to the small “parklet” of flowers in the 200 block of East Hughitt Street in downtown Iron Mountain.

This is the most-widely distributed butterfly in the world, found on every continent during some portion of the year except South America and Antarctica.

While the European version migrates annually — some will go from as far as Iceland and Scandinavia to north Africa — in North America the mass seasonal movements seem to depend on whether they had a good breeding year, according to an Iowa State University web site devoted to research on the painted lady and related red admiral.

If the numbers were any indication, I’d say they’ve had a productive season.

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.

The painted lady butterfly is the most widely distributed in the world.

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