Hey birders, This weekend I had the opportunity to introduce my students to the amazing birds of the north woods. We spent Friday night looking for Snowy Owls in the harbor, Saturday in The Bog, and Sunday morning along Lake Superior.
The students were completely spoiled from the onset when we pulled up to a Snowy Owl within 30 minutes of arriving in the harbor area on Friday night. The bird was perched on a small berm about 40 yards from the road. The bird turned and posed and eventually flew right past our van into a better hunting location atop a street light. An additional bird was located out on the ice and we watched as it flew off and landed on the mast of a ship. It is always nice to see a bird of true wilderness adapting so readily to the constructs of human development. Saturday's early rise did not yield the Great Gray Owl we were hoping for and I once again failed to find any of the mythical Sharp-tailed Grouse of the bog. However, when we pulled up to the Arkola feeders, they were empty and the situation was perfect for hand-feeding (we had brought some sunflower along). I was hoping to give my students and opportunity to feed chickadees and was quite surprised that the first bird onto my hand was a female Pine Grosbeak! I had one student who had a similar close encounter with a grosbeak and the other with several Black-capped Chickadees. Two other students with sniffles just couldn't convince the chickadees they wouldn't catch their cold. We also had a Boreal Chickadee and several Gray Jays in this area. Our other highlights from the bog were mostly along McDavitt, Admiral, and Sax Roads. McDavitt yielded 3 Northern Shrikes, a female Black-backed Woodpecker (east side on the bulldozed road), a Hoary Redpoll mixed in a flock of 25 Common Redpolls, a Northern Hawk Owl begging for mice, and a Great Gray Owl tolerating a big crowd at dusk. The Admiral Road feeders provided great looks at 4 Boreal Chickadees and after dark we had a Northern Saw-whet Owl calling from a mature stand on the north portion of this road (Josh, we did not get Boreal). A large flock of Black-billed Magpies were along Sax Road and Cranberry, but they were moving east and views were distant. Sunday we checked out Park Point at dawn and marveled at the amount of ice outside the harbor. Try as we might, we failed to find any Snowy Owls that morning. We watched some flocks of gulls circling over our heads as they headed inland. Several 1st winter Glaucous Gulls were in the group with both the pale sandy forms and white forms present. Going north, we found a small group of mergansers near the mouth of the Lester River but otherwise the lake was an avian desert. Knife River though yielded a present surprise. A female Harlequin Duck was diving with a female Bufflehead near the marina. I'm assuming this is the same bird reported back in December; I just haven't heard any additional reports of her. We returned to the Canal Park in Duluth to chum for gulls before heading south to Mankato again. What a mess! I don't get much of an opportunity to view different ages of Thayer's and Iceland Gulls in Mankato and I didn't realize how rusty I had gotten from my days in the Milwaukee harbor. We had a 1st winter Black-backed Gull cruise in and circle a couple of times (that was easy). We also had a pale 1st winter Iceland Gull and one 1st winter Thayer's Gull in the mix. I took as many pictures of the others as I could. I believe I had a 2nd winter Kumlein's Iceland and a 2nd winter Thayer's, but I will need to go over my pictures this week and really analyze these oddballs. Thanks to all the people we talked with in the bog. My students enjoyed the social aspects of the trip as much as the birds themselves. It was only after we returned to Mankato that we finally found a Pine Siskin! Happy birding! Chad Heins Mankato ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
