Oops -- hit send too early given great excitement over the Boreal extravaganza! Here is the complete message.
Today easily ranks as on of the best days of birding I've had anywhere in the world. We left Duluth this morning and spent much of the day between Duluth and Two Harbors. We saw a total of SEVEN Boreal Owls -- equal to the total number of Boreal Owls I've seen during daylight hours during the rest of my life! Four of these birds were actively hunting, and one was had just caught a vole. Being able to watch these birds hunting during the day the early morning and evening hours easily ranks as one of my best birding experiences. To anyone considering a trip to the the North Shore of Lake Superior, don't wait. I've seen dozens of Boreal Owls before, but nothing comes close to what we experienced today. Thanks to Jim Lind, we also saw a Saw-whet in Two Harbors. I've uploaded photos of each of the owls to my Flickr page. All are entered with coordinates into eBird, except for two that we saw on a traveling count along Old Hwy 61 east of Lakeland Ave (about 3/4 of mile east of there). If you pull up a current map of sightings from eBird, you'lll see the red markers for recent sightings. Honestly, I would not spend too much time worrying about going to birds that others have found. With one exception, all of these were birds that we just happend onto or saw others along the roadside. The area east of Alseth Road and west of Knife River on Scenic 61 was particularly good with three Boreals (Jim Lind had another on Old N. Shore Road -- which we were not able to refind -- this area is positively magical). At least at this point, these birds appeared alert and healthy, or simply sleepy, with none appearing obviously sick or stressed. Early morning and evening may be better, but as you can see from time stamps on these photos, midday was just as good. Boreal images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinicola/ I never would have thought that an adult BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE in February in Minnesota would have played second fiddle to anything, but it pales in comparison to the Boreal Owls, albeit completely unexpected and brilliant. We saw an adult from Lakeview Park in Two Harbors as it flew SW past Lighthouse Point. Given the extreme rarity of adults in MN, I wonder if this was the same bird found by the Larry & Jan Kraemer late last fall in Duluth. That seems unlikely, but I can't really come up with a good theory on another adult floating around in the winter. The bird appeared similar to the one they photographed, but there isn't all that much variation in appearance of adults, so . . . Yesterday was also excellent with a GREAT GRAY OWL at Taconite Harbor (Cook Co.), two male HARLEQUIN DUCKS in Grand Marais harbor, and 8 SPRUCE GROUSE about 1.5 miles north of Sand River along Lake County 2. Can't wait for tomorrow. Must rest eyes now. Best, Chris Wood eBird & Neotropical Birds Project Leader Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York http://ebird.org http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu Senior Leader, WINGS Birding Tours http://wingsbirds.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
