On Tuesday I woke up early to try to see the Bell’s Vireo and get a picture of it.  When Evan and I went on Monday we could only hear it as it was embedded deep inside the shrubs.  With a great deal of patience and a fair amount of wood ticks, I was able to see the Bell’s Vireo several times while out by myself.  The problem, though, was that I’d only see it when it would fly from one shrub to the next.  Once inside a shrub, forget about trying to find it.  I was motivated to get a picture of this one because it is a county record.  By the way, its location is no longer a secret as Randy posted it to MOU-net tonight.

After nearly two hours of chasing the bird, all I could come up with was this butt-shot. Can you find the bird?  If you can believe it, this was a good viewing for me.It was a gorgeous morning even if my pants and feet were soaked from the dew of the tall grass.  I added a life bird, the Willow Flycatcher, by making the identification from its vocalization.  Sound is the best way to tell the five Empid flycatchers apart since they basically all look alike.  His “Fitz-bew!” call was very distinctive and heard often from several different birds. I wasn’t worried about Evan getting this lifer.  There appeared to be many of these birds; it’s just a matter of bringing him out there to get it.

I also couldn’t resist this shot of the Yellow Warbler.  I never tire of seeing them.

I finally gave up on the Bell’s and decided to head home.  A few days prior, Joel had told me about a Red-headed Woodpecker that he saw just a few miles from this location. This woodpecker was a major target bird for our life lists.  It has an absolutely stunning appearance.  To make it even more unique, the bird’s population is declining due to European Starlings taking over their nesting cavities.  Therefore this bird is becoming increasingly hard to find.  When we went to Blue Mounds State Park, this bird was target #2 right behind the Blue Grosbeak.  Although we hit our primary target that trip, we missed on this one.

As I drove down the road to the residence of the sighting, I didn’t think I’d see the bird. After all, that sighting was a few days ago.  But within a minute or two of being on that road, I spotted a woodpecker on a telephone pole.  I quickly pulled over to get out and look.  No bird.  I figured it just slipped to the back side of the pole.  I was right because soon the bird flew across the road and perched on top of a post only 100 feet away.  It was the Red-headed Woodpecker indeed!  To make it even better, the sun was at my back and the early morning light on the bird was incredible.  Camera time.  I hit the power button and saw the message, “Charge the battery.” You’re kidding.  I couldn’t even get one picture of this amazing bird in this perfect set-up.  All I could do was just watch through the binoculars until it disappeared into a grove a minute later.

This was a bitter-sweet sighting.  The thrill of finding this good lifer was quickly replaced by the depressing fact that Evan wasn’t able to see it too.  That stole the joy I first had. Even Melissa winced when I told her that I found the Red-headed Woodpecker. Because this was such a good bird, I decided not to tell Evan.  This was no LBB (little brown bird). He would have been crushed.

This morning I again woke up early and went out to try to photograph the Bell’s.  After nearly an hour-and-a-half, I gave up without a single picture. Plenty of sightings, but no picture.  Once again I left and traveled down the road that held the woodpecker hoping I’d see it and could race home to get Evan.  No luck.

When I got home, I had to hop in the car again to run the kids into daycare for a few hours.  There was no hurry to get there, so on a whim I decided to take a huge detour to travel the woodpecker road again.  I’m so glad I did.  Shortly after turning onto the road, we spotted the Red-headed Woodpecker on a telephone pole!  It flew into the neighboring yard and back to the poles again, so we got plenty of good views.  Though the light wasn’t as good as yesterday, I was able to get some decent pictures. I hope you can forgive all the pictures; I tend to photo-bomb a great bird when we see it for the first time.  

It was such a relief that Evan got the bird.  Now my joy was complete, and it actually felt like I was seeing it for the first time too.

While I was taking pictures, my phone rang.  Coincidentally it was Joel.  He called to say we could go look at a Red-shouldered Hawk that was nesting at his friend’s house. Joel knew from checking our life lists on the blog that we still needed that one.  After photographing the Red-headed Woodpecker some more, we went north to meet Joel.

As we drove I couldn’t believe our luck.  We saw an amazing life bird today, and now we were about to get another!  Once on site, we weren’t able to locate the nest.  Bummer.  I wasn’t worried, though. It will just be a matter of time before Joel finds the nest and calls us back.  We also made a quick stop to look for the Grasshopper Sparrow – another bird that Joel knew we still needed.  That bird wasn’t showing today either.  I’m okay with that.  We had a monumental morning, and these other missed birds just give us something to hunt for in the future.

While en route to Fargo last Saturday, Randy texted me to let me know that he found a Bell’s Vireo. The significance of this sighting goes beyond a “good” bird or a potential lifer for us. Rather, this was the first observation of this bird showing up in our county – ever.  We are beyond its normal range but close enough where one could slip in.  This bird was on Randy’s list of birds he wanted to find for the county records, and he finally found one.

Because Randy works for the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas, a bird conservation project that seeks to document every species that breeds in the state, he needed to establish that the Bell’s Vireo was breeding in our county.  Such a determination would come from multiple observations over a period of days.  Randy did not post this sighting on MOU-Net out of fear that multiple birders would flock to see this rarity.  Birders, in their zest to see such a bird, have been known to play the bird’s song on electronic devices in order to attract it. This could ultimately cause the bird to move away from the area.  Randy’s plan was to post the sighting after five days, but he let a handful of us know about it right away, trusting we’d be mindful of our interaction with the bird.

Today I took a break from working around the house to take Evan out to find the Bell’s Vireo.  Right away when we got on site, we heard it singing.  We tried our hardest to see it, but it moved around often and would sing from new locations.  We never did get our eyes on it.  Evan wants to count it anyway.  Considering the rarity of the bird, I think we just might.

In our search today we did get a new life bird, the Savannah Sparrow.

And then Evan picked up his Clay-colored Sparrow lifer.  I found mine in our yard over a month ago.  Evan gets upset when I find birds he doesn’t, so for the last month he’s claimed multiple times he’s seen one.  He’s been trying awfully hard to turn all kinds of birds into the Clay-colored Sparrow.  He can finally put that bird to rest after this morning.

We’ll count the Bell’s Vireo on our life list because it is a special sighting and we did locate it by sound, but I’ll be heading out tomorrow to try to get that picture.  Bell’s or not, it was really cool that Evan got two bonus lifers out of our brief search today.