Hi My friend Herb Lindsay and I went up along Mille Lacs lake and up to Aitkin county today to see what we would find. Starting at Mille Lacs we got a winter plumage Bonaparte’s Gull. We also saw several female common mergansers and three flocks of Snow buntings. We saw a few more buntings up north of Palisades. Between Aitkin county and Mille Lacs we saw six rough legged hawks including one dark morphed. We also saw a northern shrike . Also north Palisades along CR 5 we stopped and there was a light Morphed Rough Legged hawk that wasn’t at all skittish. We got within twenty feet of him in fact we were prepared to bump him in order to get in flight photos but he wasn’t spooked by us at all. When he finally did fly he flew a hundred yards south of there and landed near the road and he allowed him to approach him again. He dove to the ground but didn’t catch anything. We probably watched him close up for twenty minutes. We thought that we saw some tree sparrows as well. We got fairly close to a red tailed hawk and a couple of bald eagles and a pied billed grebe. All in all it was a good day. We looked intently along CR18 and Pietz’s road for Great Grey Owls but had no luck unfortunately . Here are some photos from my flickr page at this link https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/ Ron Taube Coon Rapids
