History of CGORS:
The shoreline of Lake Michigan near Cedar Grove, Wisconsin has probably had concentrations of migrating hawks in autumn since the end of the ice age. Banding operations began here in 1935 under the auspices of the Milwaukee Public Museum with help from the Civilian Conservation Corps. The prominent Wisconsin scientist and artist, Owen Gromme was one of the main banders at the site. Banding and observations were postponed during World War II. In 1950, two local bird enthusiasts from Milwaukee, Helmut Mueller and Daniel Berger, went in search of the blind, found it, and assumed the trapping and banding operations. They would go on to introduce new trapping techniques used worldwide and influence the field of raptor research through decades of published scientific literature. Today their work continues through the CGORS team of banders and volunteers.
In 2010, William Robichaud published “Notes on a Remarkable History: Cedar Grove Ornithological Station” in the Passenger Pigeon. Take a look!
In 1960-1961 there was an irruption of Snowy Owls into Wisconsin. Project SNOWSTORM created a blog post about it back in 2015. Check it out.
