Enjoyed the great birds and very cold temps northern Minnesota had to offer recently. Quite different than our home state of Florida.
At the Blue Spruce feeder in the "bog" we saw one Hoary Redpoll (well-defined silverish back) amongst the 40 or so Common Redpolls. Just one Boreal Chickadee was seen at the Admiral Road feeder. We saw several Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Shrikes and Black-billed Magpies in the "bog" as well as a lone Great Gray Owl - all on the 20th. On the 21st at Grand Marais we saw an incredible 2500 Bohemian Waxings. They were virtually everywhere, feeding on the fruit of mountain ash. What a sight! We may have under-estimated the number. Earlier in the morning we saw 40+ Red Crossbills along 16 just west of reaching the Lake County line. Surprisingly, we saw no White-winged Crossbills this trip. There were plenty of Pine Grosbeaks, Black-capped Chickadees, Pine Siskins and Common Redpolls at the Gooseberry Falls SP feeders as well as a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches and Downy & Hairy Woodpeckers. The 22nd offered up the drake Barrow's Goldeneye at Canal Point in Duluth as well as Glaucous, Iceland, Great Black-backed, Herring and Ring-billed Gulls. The reported Glaucous-winged was probably there, but we didn't see it. Three Snow Buntings were on the ground at Park Point - seen at the main parking lot. That afternoon, about 4:40, we saw two Snowy Owls atop light poles along I-35 on the Minnesota side of the Blatnik Bridge approach. We found 42 species during our stay. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
