For southern Minnesotans that don’t want to travel to northerly locales to observe a Black-backed Woodpecker this winter, there have been two (2) females for the past several days on the Blue Hill Trail at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. Originally found by Gary Swanson, then the second bird located by Alex Sundvall.
Here are some specific location descriptions from eBird reports: In the spruce grove: one about 200 yards in, the other right at the entrance. At the first right-hand turn west of the entrance to the spruces, seen together briefly. Up here in Montreal, Quebec, there has been higher than average observations (but nothing record-shattering, as far as I can tell). I tried looking on the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory website, but couldn’t determine if the counts were unusually high for Black-backed Woodpecker. Perhaps this will be a decent winter for the species outside of the normal range, so keep your eyes out on your local patch of spruces, southerners! P.S. If you really want to keep closer tabs on such sightings, consider subscribing to eBird’s Minnesota Rare Bird Alert. You can receive messages hourly or daily. Good birding! Alyssa DeRubeis Montreal, QC ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
