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Hello everyone! We just got back from a three day trip up to Sax Zim and surrounding areas. Lots of great birds. We were inspired by Mike Hendrickson's email on the 28th. We, however, found the same birds in a lot of different locations; so it's good birding up there. Here were the highlights of Sax Zim: Gray-crowned Rosy-finch: We spotted all three of them at their location. (In the dead sunflower patch at the blue office building in Cloquet.) Boreal Chickadee: We saw probably 8 of these throughout our second day. There seem to be packs of roaming chickadees throughout Sax Zim, and if you find a pack of them, just listen for the odd buzzier call in the pack. A lot of fun to see. We spotted ours about four miles east of Hwy 7 on Arkola Rd. (CR 52). They were moving fast however, and soon gone, though we actually got a scope on one. We spotted some more on Owl Ave. later in the evening. Three-toed Woodpecker: We found one male about three miles north of CR 28 on McDavitt Rd. Driving around there, we spotted stripped bark on the east side of the road and got out to listen for pecking. We spotted it briefly before it sank deeper into the forest. Black-backed Woodpecker: At two locations. There were three (two females and a male) at the same location as the Three-toed, pecking away, and one more on Hedbom Trail around the spot that Mike Hendrickson saw his. (2.6 miles down for the yellow gate.) Just look for the stripped trees. White-winged Crossbill: We saw a beautiful pair of them on CR 980. To get there, go south down Owl Ave and it's a cross street about two miles down. Common Redpolls: We spotted a tree full of them at the same location as the Boreal Chickadee flock. We also spotted some of the more common residents... Red-breasted Nuthatches, lots of Northern Shrikes, a scattering of Gray Jays, a few Pine Grosbeaks, a lone Harrier flew by over Owl Ave... As for Duluth, we drove to the parking lot and walked to the shipping bay under the lift bridge. Among the hundreds of Common Goldeneye, we spotted a lone female* Long-tailed Duck* which was mixing with the Common Goldeneye and diving a lot. A lone *White-winged Scoter* was also standing out in front of all the Goldeneye. And lastly, the male *Harlequin Duck* floated by, way, way out at the tips of the lighthouses. We watched him for a minute, then totally lost him, then jumped in shock when we looked over and spotted him floating right by us in the shipping lane. We watched him float to the ice at the mouth of the harbor, and then saw him fly off to the buoys west of us way out into Superior. On our way back to the parking lot, to our shock, we spotted the female Harlequin swimming next to the ice just near the shore. Just as an after-note, it was unbelievably cold. If you go up there, dress warm, because it is freezing. I don't think it ever got above 5 degrees. And that's not counting the winds. Good birding! - Leo Wexler-Mann --------------070605040202090403050705 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Hello everyone!<br> We just got back from a three day trip up to Sax Zim and surrounding areas. Lots of great birds. We were inspired by Mike Hendrickson's email on the 28th. We, however, found the same birds in a lot of different locations; so it's good birding up there. Here were the highlights of Sax Zim:<br> <br> Gray-crowned Rosy-finch: We spotted all three of them at their location. (In the dead sunflower patch at the blue office building in Cloquet.)<br> <br> Boreal Chickadee: We saw probably 8 of these throughout our second day. There seem to be packs of roaming chickadees throughout Sax Zim, and if you find a pack of them, just listen for the odd buzzier call in the pack. A lot of fun to see. We spotted ours about four miles east of Hwy 7 on Arkola Rd. (CR 52). They were moving fast however, and soon gone, though we actually got a scope on one. We spotted some more on Owl Ave. later in the evening.<br> <br> Three-toed Woodpecker: We found one male about three miles north of CR 28 on McDavitt Rd. Driving around there, we spotted stripped bark on the east side of the road and got out to listen for pecking. We spotted it briefly before it sank deeper into the forest.<br> <br> Black-backed Woodpecker: At two locations. There were three (two females and a male) at the same location as the Three-toed, pecking away, and one more on Hedbom Trail around the spot that Mike Hendrickson saw his. (2.6 miles down for the yellow gate.) Just look for the stripped trees.<br> <br> White-winged Crossbill: We saw a beautiful pair of them on CR 980. To get there, go south down Owl Ave and it's a cross street about two miles down.<br> <br> Common Redpolls: We spotted a tree full of them at the same location as the Boreal Chickadee flock.<br> <br> We also spotted some of the more common residents... Red-breasted Nuthatches, lots of Northern Shrikes, a scattering of Gray Jays, a few Pine Grosbeaks, a lone Harrier flew by over Owl Ave... <br> <br> As for Duluth, we drove to the parking lot and walked to the shipping bay under the lift bridge.<br> Among the hundreds of Common Goldeneye, we spotted a lone female<b> Long-tailed Duck</b> which was mixing with the Common Goldeneye and diving a lot. A lone <b>White-winged Scoter</b> was also standing out in front of all the Goldeneye. And lastly, the male <b>Harlequin Duck</b> floated by, way, way out at the tips of the lighthouses. We watched him for a minute, then totally lost him, then jumped in shock when we looked over and spotted him floating right by us in the shipping lane. We watched him float to the ice at the mouth of the harbor, and then saw him fly off to the buoys west of us way out into Superior. On our way back to the parking lot, to our shock, we spotted the female Harlequin swimming next to the ice just near the shore.<br> <br> Just as an after-note, it was unbelievably cold. If you go up there, dress warm, because it is freezing. I don't think it ever got above 5 degrees. And that's not counting the winds.<br> <br> Good birding!<br> - Leo Wexler-Mann<br> </body> </html> --------------070605040202090403050705--
