Hello: Great Gray Owls reported during the winter season = 60 Northern Hawk Owls reported during the winter season = 67 Snowy Owls reported during the winter season = 65 Boreal Owls reported during the winter season = 19 ( 15 alive & 4 found dead )
Great Gray Owl peaked in mid December thru early January with many sightings coming from the Sax Zim Bog area but for some reason in late January to the present these owls were very hard to locate in the bog and perhaps anywhere in northern Minnesota. What I found interesting is during late January thru the present Great Gray Owl sightings are mainly reported in the dusk hours rather than dawn hours. Northern Hawk Owls peaked around the same time as Great Gray Owls did and the bulk or the reports came from Beltrami & Lake of the Woods counties. There were several reported sightings in the Sax Zim Bog area as well and also outside of the Duluth city limits. Even reports along the north shore of Lake Superior were interesting to see. Yes there are still Northern Hawks still hanging around in the Sax Zim Bog area BUT on Saturday several birding groups could not locate one Hawk Owl in the bog!! I relocated the Northern Hawk Owl on the Jean Duluth Rd last Saturday ( 2/21/09 ) near the Beyer Rd intersection and the Hawk Owl just north of Cromwell on Hwy. 73 might still be around. I also suspect the Hawk Owls along the north shore near Knife River, Silver Bay might still be around as well. Hopefully the Hawk Owls along McDavitt Rd are still to be found but the last time a Hawk Owl was reported in the bog was on Feb. 20th. Snowy Owls began to appear in late November thru December all over Minnesota. In January till the present just some spattering reports trickled thru but the majority of reports were in December. Boreal Owls did not show up in people's yard or found along roadsides until early January and there was flury of reports during one week in late January. The north shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors were the hot spots to locate these little owls. Compared to the owl irruption of 2004/05 this years Boreal Owl irruption did not produce a lot of sightings nor reports of dead owls. This is good! With very little sightings this winter season nor dead owls picked up I wonder if the majority of the Boreal Owls that made the move to southern St. Louis County and other places in NE Minnesota did pretty well in finding prey items? It'll be interesting to see the results of the spring owl surveys in NE Minnesota if any Boreal Owl will be detected or the MN Breeding Bird Atlas reports. That's it and I thanks all the folks who reported owl sightings to me for the maps and I will soon update my blog and post all the maps of the owls for you to enjoy. Mike Hendrickson Mike Hendrickson Duluth, Minnesota Website: http://webpages.charter.net/mmhendrickson/ Blog: http://colderbythelakebirding.blogspot.com/ ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
