This afternoon we drove up to check out the Tundra Swan site that Betsy Beneke reported in Kanabec County - nothing there, water frozen. So we revised our Aitkin County route to check out CR56 where we had seen swans in past years. No swans, but it was the start of what turned out to be a raptor census of some sort. Along CR56, CR5, CR18, and US169 homeward, we saw a total of 34 Rough-legged Hawks, only a few were dark morphs. We got great looks at most of them - almost all were perched and flew when the car approached, none were hovering. We also saw six Red-tailed Hawks, and witnessed a very interesting interaction on CR5 about a half mile south of MN210. A Rough-legged and a Red-tailed, flew from adjacent power poles out over a field and circled each other to get position, etc, when out of nowhere a second Red-tailed dive-bombed the Rough-legged in a falcon-like manner. We didn't think to put the window down to hear what it sounded like.
We saw a total of 22 Bald Eagles - over a dozen of them, along with two Ravens, had something in a field along CR18 about two miles east of US169. Completing the raptor count, four Northern Harriers. Also, two Northern Shrikes, two Trumpeter Swans, a Great Blue Heron, a scattering of Canada Geese (a turnabout, fewer than the hawks and eagles), and a few dozen Crows. Mammals included a skunk, a raccoon (both live, not roadkill) and about 40 deer, most feeding and loafing in groups. And, a prelude to this wonderful trip - yesterday we saw two Sandhill Cranes feeding in a small wet spot in a field in Ramsey, a couple miles west of home, and today my husband saw his first Red-winged Blackbirds on his morning walk. Erika Sitz Ramsey, north Anoka County ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
