I just returned yesterday from a 5-night/ 6-day canoeing/ camping trip into the BWCA. We embarked at Mudro Lake and canoed/ portaged into Fourtown Lake where we camped. The St. Louis/ Lake County line runs through the middle of Fourtown Lake; our campsite was in Lake County. This was the first time I have done the BWCA in many years and was the hardest I have worked in a long time. Using my GPS device I estimate that we canoed/ portaged approximately 40 miles. We were approximately 10 miles from Canada.
We had a nesting pair of pine warblers in our campsite and there were ovenbirds, chestnut-sided warblers, American redstarts, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, yellow-bellied sapsuckers also in and very near camp. Several spotted sandpipers were bobbing around on the rocks in front of camp and elsewhere on Fourtown Lake. There were at least 3 pairs of loons on the lake giving us all day and late night entertainment. A pair of bald eagles had a next just across the bay from our camp. When we cleaned fish and put the remainder on the rocks, we had several herring gulls noisily fighting over the food. There was a roosting turkey vulture about 100 yards from camp. Several piliated woodpeckers drummed and called back and forth every day. There were other warblers around which I periodically heard, but I am not good enough to identify them from their calls yet. I was able to positively id black-throated green and mourning warbler. We also had beavers swimming/ tail slapping around camp and we saw a cow moose about ready to deliver. The only bear experience was one which ran across the road on our drive out. For me the best birding experience of the trip was northern saw-whet owls calling every night. Fun trip with my younger brother, my nephew, and a couple of other guys. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
