I am fortunate to teach at a school with a four-day school week, which means that I have several Mondays off.  These days are often a chance for me to catch up on some projects and just hang out with Marin.  Today was no different as Marin and I got not one, but two oil changes done, and we shopped for the groceries too.  Marin was an absolute trooper always keeping herself entertained wherever we went.  At the car dealership she and I played with toy cars in the their playroom, and at the store she “helped” me shop.

I also like Mondays because I’m able to drive Evan to and from school.  It’s nice for him to be able to sleep in a little longer on these days.  After Marin and I picked up Evan from school, we went to Evan’s piano lesson.  Again Marin was a trooper as she was dragged along to something else. This time she played her Kindle and danced to the live band that was playing at the coffee shop where we waited.

After piano I decided to take advantage of the increasing amount of daylight to go look for our resident Snowy Owl with the kids.  I’ve made several checks on this owl in the last month to keep tabs on it, and I have seen it and reported it a number of times.  Most of the time, though, I’m by myself or with other birders so I don’t write about it on this blog.  It has been fun to have a Snowy Owl so close to home – just 12 miles away.  Every time I go out looking for it, it’s like a big game of “Where’s Waldo?” since it’s never in the same place and it blends in with the white landscape.  Sometimes I find it perched on the ground in fields, sitting on irrigators, or perched up nicely on a powerline pole.  Today was a pole day as we found it right away in beautiful light with clear blue skies, no less. Unfortunately, it flushed from the pole as soon as I pulled safely onto the shoulder, and it landed on a nearby Morton building.  My photos were taken from nearly 75 yards, but I managed to get some fun ones without disturbing the owl.  While these owls frequently perch on buildings and houses, this was the first time I’d witnessed it.

Our Resident Snowy Owl

This owl has been significant for many birders. A couple of my friends finally saw their Kandiyohi County Snowy Owl with this one.  In fact, Joel had been waiting for over a decade to see one in our county. For many others, this was simply a Snowy Owl life bird.  And other, hard-core birders known as county listers – those who keep a list of birds for each of Minnesota’s 87 counties – have made the trip to see this owl because Kandiyohi has been a tough county in which to tally a Snowy. This owl has been very photogenic and has stuck around for well over a month now.  It definitely spices up the mundane winter birding around here.

A wide-angle shot for my mom…and Morton Buildings

I don’t know how long we will get to enjoy the company of this magnificent owl.  This has been an historic year for Snowy Owls across the country as they have invaded the northern states in droves.  Who knows when we will ever see another winter like this one.  Therefore I’m going to soak up the experience of our resident Snowy by visiting it often and doing my part as a citizen scientist to document its continued presence on eBird.org.  As fun as it’s been for the kids to see these owls (numerous times), I don’t think they fully appreciate or understand the significance of this phenomenon.  Maybe someday they can look back at these posts and see just how cool of a time this was.

First my Dad found out about the duck on his email.  We found the duck on the Mississippi River in Sartell, MN.  And it was PRETTY cold!!

Dam across the Mississippi River in Sartell, Minnesota

There were other ducks there too…Common Goldeneyes about 30 and Mallards about 95.

Common Goldeneye Drakes

It was our second try to find this duck.  There were 2 other people with me – dad and Marin. And I got to skip school!  And I got to spend over an hour in the car.

Evan and Marin looking to find the Long-tailed Duck among the Common Goldeneyes

And it was hard to see because it goes under the water all the time!

The Long-tailed Duck was difficult to spot!

The Long-tailed Duck is formerly known as the Oldsquaw

This Long-tailed Duck was first discovered by Herb Dingmann on January 29th.  Herb showed up to point the duck out to us or we never would have found it!

Then we watched the movie Nut Job in a theater.

Evan the Blogger

Editor’s Note: Evan wrote this post himself. The title, word choices, punctuation, and points of emphasis are his. My involvement was helping him do a pre-writing activity to brainstorm the facts. I also wrote the captions for the pictures.

December was a record month for us for seeing owls. By the time we had come home from our trip Up North, we had seen 6 Great Gray Owls, 3 Northern Hawk Owls, and 4 Snowy Owls.  But the fun didn’t stop there.  Well, I should say that for my family it did.  I was still thrilled with reports of local Snowy Owls and went on to check them out.  The appeal had worn off for my family. My coworker, Bonnie, in Grove City texted me on New Year’s Eve that the owl she had seen around her place was now on a pole on her road.  Not only did she get her lifer Snowy, but it was a yard bird for her as well! Birders could only dream of claiming such a bird on their yard lists.

I went to go check it out.  My family wasn’t interested.  It’s hard for me to resist a Snowy Owl that is only 15 minutes away, though.  Plus I wanted to get a picture for Bonnie and for eBird.  Apparently this particular Snowy flushes at approaching cars, and the mailman had scared it off just minutes before I got there. I was undeterred and scanned the nearby fields and poles carefully.  My search paid off. Do you see the suspicisous white lump in the field below that caused me to grab my binoculars?

Can you find Bonnie’s Snowy Owl in this field near Grove City, Minnesota?

They blend in so incredibly well.  I’m sure I’ve driven by several already this winter and not known it. It was quite a thrill to “discover” this one nearly a quarter mile from the road on the ground.  Here is a closer view.

I waited for a long time, and eventually it flew back to its perch on the road.

Bonnie’s Snowy on the perch where she could watch it from the comfort of her warm house.

I crept the car closer for a better photo which I have vowed to stop doing because this bird flew off. I tried to get some flight images of this fast moving, powerful raptor, but it was too much of a challenge. I enjoy the backdrop of this image, so I included it in the post.

Can you find Bonnie’s Snowy Owl?

I tried to keep tabs on this bird for awhile, but I think my presence aggravated it enough to disappear from sight.  So, it was time to go home.  Besides, I had already missed enough of the New Year’s Eve fun that Melissa had planned for the kids.  I was worried that I had ruined the opportunity for some other coworkers that Bonnie had called out to come see her owl.  However, I was relieved to find out a couple days later that this bird was seen by them later that day.

I went back to work on January 2nd.  It was immediately clear to me that I should have checked my work email more often over the break.  I came back to find nearly half a dozen emails from coworkers who had seen Snowy Owls in the Litchfield/Grove City area! Wow!  The owl prowl continued! Much of the information was now a few days old which is a long time in the birding world.  However, a brand new report came in Thursday night. This one was from Kodi, our elementary principal.  She emailed me cell-phone pictures of a Snowy Owl she had seen on her way home from work that evening!  This was fresh information, so I planned to get out there at daybreak to see if I could find it. Because sunrise is so late, I literally had two minutes to search before I had to be at work.  I checked all the pole tops and didn’t have any luck.  I drove by there after work as well but struck out again.

Kodi’s Snowy Owl was significant because it was sighted in Kandiyohi County, which has been left out of the Snowy Owl fun all winter.  A couple of my friends have been waiting to add this bird to their Kandiyohi County list for quite some time.  One, in fact, has been waiting over a decade.  Kodi’s bird actually was the second Snowy Owl seen in our county that day as Randy found the first one – a bird that I was literally one mile away from the other day.  So the Kandiyohi birders were excited to go find one of these two owls.

It wasn’t until two days later that Joel rediscovered Kodi’s owl and finally got his Kandiyohi Snowy after more than ten years.  I got the call in the grocery store in Willmar when I was with the whole family.  They gracefully obliged me to go search for this owl, even with a car full of groceries, even driving on icy roads.  Steve and I arrived out there about the same time.  We drove and drove the roads and scanned the fields.  We could not locate it.  From reports we heard, the owl must have been there the whole time because it was seen just before and just after our search.  Frustrating.

I had to try again in the morning.  Though it was brutally cold and all the area churches were closed for cold and treacherous roads, I was out there.  I was about the only person dumb enough to be out and about.  But my search paid off as I located the owl on top of an irrigator over a quarter mile from the nearest road.

Kodi’s Snowy Owl near Atwater, Minnesota

This is the best photo I could muster from a quarter mile away.

At least a half dozen birders besides myself got to see this owl. I am thankful for all the reports I’ve gotten from coworkers regarding Snowy Owls.  They have put Meeker and Kandiyohi Counties on the map in the birding world.  Without them these two counties would be very quiet during this Snowy Owl invasion that is playing out across the country.  Now the Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City area is one of the “hotbeds” of activity, sending all kinds of birders to our backroads to prowl for owls.  I personally have seen 4 of my 6 Snowy Owls, including my lifer, because the people I work with have let me know about their sightings. The best part, though, is watching their enthusiasm as they see one of these magnificent visitors for the first time.

When there are all kinds of family members to visit Up North, it is very difficult to get away to do any serious birding. This is a tough truth to accept when there are so many incredible finds in the northwoods. One way to get in some good birding and visiting is to watch the feeder action at those relatives’ houses. One thing that was interesting this year was the concentration of American Goldfinches wherever we went. There was one bird that was considerably larger than the finches and required a bit of study. It turned out to be an immature White-crowned Sparrow. It doesn’t look like much, so big deal, right? Well, it is a big deal because these birds have migrated through Minnesota long ago. They aren’t suppposed to be in Minnesota right now, let alone the very northern part of it. It was a good find and one that I reported to eBird.org.

An Out-of-Season, Immature White-crowned Sparrow

One day that we went to Melissa’s grandma’s house, I asked her grandma if she had any grosbeaks show up.  She told me that there were a half dozen or so Evening Grosbeaks, or the “yellow ones” as the locals say, that appeared just a few hours before we were there.  So I watched the feeders but never saw them.

I’ve been learning that the Evening Grosbeaks are somewhat of a prize even for us northern birders.  Apparently their numbers are way down. This was both sad and surprising to me as I remember both them and Pine Grosbeaks covering our feeders when I grew up.  They were practically pests.  Though I’ve seen this bird plenty in my life, I wanted to make sure I got a photo of one.  This trip Up North would be my last opportunity for the year, so I told Melissa’s grandma I was coming to see her the next morning.  I even brought Melissa along.  Grandma’s house was nice and cozy warm from her wood furnace on this sub-zero day, and there is always a hot pot of coffee and treats on the table.  That makes for some pretty good bird watching.

The ever-present, friendly Black-capped Chickadee. I was 2 feet away from this bird for this picture.

Red-breasted Nuthatch – a year-round resident in northern Minnesota

As I watched the feeders I also kept an eye on the trees across the yard.  Eventually I saw a couple of bigger, yellowish birds moving around in the far-off tree.

It was a male Evening Grosbeak – the one I was after today.  He and a female companion eventually flew in to the feeders.

Evening Grosbeak male

Evening Grosbeak female

It felt good to get a picture. The trip over to Grandma’s would have been worth it even if we struck out.  It’s always fun to see Grandma.  As we continued to munch on treats and sip coffee, more Evening Grosbeaks came in.  There ended up being 7 birds – 4 males and 3 females.

Evening Grosbeak males

Eventually we left Melissa’s grandma and went back to our parents’ houses to see them again and get packed up for our trip home the next day.

That next day came, and it was cold!  But we had to get home.  We had already extended our trip one day because of the cold temps and a blizzard back home. It just so happens that the Sax-Zim Bog is on our way south.  We wouldn’t have time to explore the Bog since we were just passing through on County Road 7 that runs north-south.  Besides watching for birds, we kept watching the van thermometer drop. It bottomed up in the lowlands of the Bog at -33.

Brrrr

As we birded County Road 7 at 55 MPH I spotted a good bird – another Northern Hawk Owl.  It was only identifiable by sillhouette since it was so far from the road.

Northern Hawk Owl on County Road 7 in the Sax-Zim Bog

Sometimes it’s okay to not see the fine details of a bird.  Taking a step back and looking at the bigger scene playing out can be just as much fun.

Sunrise in the Sax-Zim Bog – Can you find the Northern Hawk Owl?

As we motored along we flushed up a pair of reddish birds who were on the snowbank by the shoulder.  I recognized them as Pine Grosbeaks. Again, this was a bird I’ve seen plenty, but I have not yet photographed them.  It looks like I’m going to have to wait until next winter to get a good photo, but you can at least see what they look like here.

Pine Grosbeak male

Sadly we exited the Bog and got back on the freeway.  Of course I had to make a quick detour in the town of Cloquet to look for a Snowy Owl that was reported on a Catholic church the night before.  No luck.

Another detour I had up my sleeve was to go by Grove City when we were very close to home.  A coworker had texted me the night before that a Snowy Owl showed up right near her house.  As we checked out the site and found nothing, I checked my messages.  This same coworker texted me that her husband had seen a Snowy about 7 miles away near Litchfield just a couple hours before! 7 miles is nothing, but we had just come to the end of a 265 mile trip.  Though the family was travel-weary, they obliged me by letting me go take a look.

We got out there, and the owl was still on top of a power pole! That made for a 12 owl trip! It was fun to hear Melissa and Evan say, “Yep, I see it!” after I initially spotted it. There is something exciting about owls to birders and non-birders alike.

Snowy Owl on Co. Rd. 11 near Litchfield, Minnesota

Sadly I tried to creep the car a little closer on the crunchy snow of the shoulder for a better picture of the owl, and it spooked. I never did refind it.  I was really mad at myself for being so foolish.  It’s not good to disturb these birds as they need to conserve their energy since they’ve just come from a very long journey from the Arctic.  Plus I may have disrupted it while it was hunting.  And, other birders now wouldn’t get to see it.  It was a bad choice on my part. I was happy to hear a few days later that one of my coworkers refound this same bird a mile to the north just an hour after we had seen it.

Seeing a Snowy Owl never gets old, and this was a fitting finish for an epic trip.  Though this trip was now over, the Snowy Owl fun has continued. Be sure to check it out in the next blog post.