I would add only a few items to the postings from Warren Nelson and Doug Kieser from earlier today.
We were also birding the same areas as they have described, with many sightings of rough-legged hawks, a few shrikes, and only one hawk owl. We did see several late American tree sparrows on highway 18 near highway 5. The hawk owl we saw was 3 miles South of Hwy 18 on Hwy 5. The bird was at least 1/4 mile East of Hwy 5 and never came closer to the road. The mystery of it all is that we drove Highway 1 at least twice past the area Warren described his sighting of hawk owl, at least three times past the highway 18 and 5 intersection, and at least three times past the Hwy 169 and highway 18 intersections at times from around 10am through around 3pm and never saw any hawk owls. On our way back to Duluth, we did find a new hawk owl on US Highway 2 about 2 miles East of the MN200 intersection. It was actively hunting about 4:20pm, just before sundown. Early season hawk owls seem to be much more unpredictable than those we see in mid-winter. They also seem to be more active earlier and later in the day than those we see in mid-winter. So if you don't see a hawk owl at a previously described site, keep trying since the bird may well still be in the area. This does seem to be a bit of a hawk-owl irruption year, and there are probably many more owls out there we haven't spotted yet. I'm heartened by the sightings of Great Grey owls in the past few days by several groups. Great Grey owls have been quite sparse since the big invasion year of 2004-5. David Alexander Duluth ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
