Just got back from several days of birding in northwestern and north central Minnesota. Some specific species of interest follow along with some related comments.
First, it is very wet up there. A lot of forest roads in Koochiching, Lake of the Woods, and Beltrami Counties are nearly underwater and you have to be very careful where you go. The Rainy River is over its banks and flowing very hard and fast. With the drainage ditches full of water in the forest I wouldn't expect the Rainy to go down anytime soon. This leads to Lake of the Woods being as high as we have ever seen it (although we are sure that locals have seen it higher.) At Morris Point there was no beach as the water was right up to the rock rip-rap. Pointing a scope to where we know the Piping Plover islands are showed no island that we could see. Possible they were obscured by the waves be we simply could not see any islands. Presumably that means nesting on these islands will not happen this year. Snowy Egret-two birds, 6/5, Grant County, Bah WMA, 3/10ths of a mile east of Douglas County Road 19 on Grant County Road 54, Cattle Egrets were also seen in the adjacent normal pasture Three-toed Woodpecker-paired up male and female, 6/7, Koochiching County, 6/10ths mile north of County Rd 77 on County Road 13 (we think this is the same place as others found them last year Boreal Chickadee- 6/7, Koochiching County, 5.9 miles north of Hwy 71 on County Road 13 Spruce Grouse-Scenic State Park, Itasca County, 6/8, on lower part of trail to fire tower Black-backed Woodpecker-Scenic State Park, 6/8, on cross country ski trail that goes due north from fire tower trail, couple of trees being worked over pretty well Trumpeter Swan-6/7, Koochiching County, pair on Bartlett Lake by Northhome may be a first county record Overall birding was great and the mosquitoes were huge and extremely abundant. Dennis and Barbara Martin dbmar...@skypoint.com
