Let it SNOW!

Snowy Owl10 and 2.  Eyes straight. I couldn’t be distracted by birds and such on the drive; my focus was on the road and those who patrol it as we hurtled down the highway.  With a slightly elevated heart rate for over three hours, I was racing to get home from Duluth and the North Shore to get on the scene of a great bird before sundown. The bird that had been upgraded to the top of the priority list that we were now straining to reach was none other than the Snowy Owl. And with a blizzard that was forecast to dump a lot of snow on us late that night, this was the last easy day to find a white bird.

The day before our sea duck trip a strange set of circumstances occurred.  The lesser was that I forgot my phone at home all day.  The greater was that my colleague, Mike, nearly sliced his finger off while cutting a squash before baking it.  Getting home that night I finally reconnected with my phone and saw a stunning text from Mike: “Snowy Owl just north of my place – 9:30”  I couldn’t believe it.  The next day I caught up with Mike and asked him about it.  He told me that he was driving himself to the doctor after the aforementioned accident when he saw an all-white Snowy Owl 10 yards from the road sitting in a plowed field.  I was floored.  This is early for Snowies, and this was only the second sighting in the state.  Something similar happened last year when Mike found me my lifer.  That was late November and the 5th one in the state.  Then our region (Kandiyohi and Meeker Counties) became one of the hottest hot beds for Snowy Owl activity in an historic irruption of SNOW.  (Check it out on eBird or look in my “Owls” category). Word quickly spread throughout our school, and I was fielding reports from all kinds of staff and students on new sightings of Snowy Owls.  It was a fun season to watch so many people, birders and non-birders, get excited about seeing their first Snowy Owl.

So I was slightly disappointed to not be able to investigate Mike’s sighting as I was going on the sea duck trip.  Regardless, I put the word out to other birders on the listserv.  Jeff Grotte answered the call and came owl hunting.  Amazingly he turned one up 5 miles from Mike’s.  Surely it was the same bird.

As I drove, I put in a call to birding coworker, Bonnie, who lives just a few miles from this owl.  Bonnie went out and got eyes on it.  It was perched nicely for her on a telephone pole. I was still two hours out. Meanwhile, other birding coworkers, Brad and Theresa, went to have a look.  No owl.  Brad would call me when they found it.  One hour out.

I arrived at the scene with no positive updates from Brad or Bonnie.  But finally getting here I was now calm and confident.  There was no snow.  A Snowy Owl would stick out anywhere and likely wouldn’t have traveled far.  I started from ground-zero and surveyed the landscape.

Evan

I’ve had the good fortune of getting a lot of practice looking for these things.  Eyes started scanning every pole top, every rooftop, basically any low perch out in the open.  I’ve learned to look for slight anomalies on distant irrigators, fences, or transmission line support structures. Go back and look at the first photo – did you see the slight bump on the upper right of the tower?  It was even more imperceptible from where I saw it and took the picture of Evan above, but that bump was not replicated on any of the other towers. Thankfully the zoom on the camera could confirm my suspicion.

Snowy Owl

The Snowy Owl! It never gets old to see SNOW.  I was shocked to see how HIGH this bird was perched.  I estimate this tower to be 60-70 feet high.  Normally Snowy Owls perch very low off the ground or even on the ground itself if they can find a suitable knob of land that sticks up.

Snowy OwlJust as shocking as the owl’s height was its coloration.  Mike saw an all-white Snowy at 10 yards just 5 miles away a few days ago.  This was definitely a second Snowy Owl.  Are we in for an echo year of another big irruption? As of this writing, according to the sources Jeff Grotte has pulled together, there have now been 10 Snowies in Minnesota already!  Jeff has put together a great Facebook group called “Owl About Minnesota” with lots of great photos and intel.

I would have to be satisfied with my distant looks and add more distant, grainy pics to my Snowy Owl photo collection.  Maybe soon I’ll be able to get some phenomenal photo crushes like Jeff did in the coming days.  Meanwhile, check out those heavy clouds on the horizon in the photo below. They were carrying a raging snowstorm and one lost, little bird from the Pacific Northwest. Check out the stunning vagrant in the next post.

IMG_1192

October Birds

October has been relatively light on birding as busy schedules and a mediocre fall migration have not provided a lot of exciting birding opportunities.  To drive this point home, the best birding moment was getting a county Snow Goose.

Snow Goose

October’s saving grace, though, is that the yard activity picks up tremendously.  With winter approaching, some of the more reclusive birds and even a couple of the northern birds are being drawn out of the woodwork. The window-birding at home has been quite entertaining lately.  Everyone in this house has been caught looking at some bird or another at least once in the last week. So here’s a photo-tour of some of our frequent visitors.

We’ve had a few Blue Jays show up regularly this past month.  The way these birds fly, show off their beauty, bully the others, and swallow sunflower seeds whole make this the bird to watch.

Blue Jay

Blue Jay

Though not as pretty as the Blue Jay, especially during the winter months, the American Goldfinch is always a fun bird to see.

American Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

I begrudgingly post this next photo of a northern visitor.  The first Dark-eyed Junco showed up in late September.  It is always symbolic of the cold winter months to follow. They spend a good half year with us, so their arrival is not always a welcome sight. Still, they are a constant part of the winter birding scene, and they come in fun, different flavors.

Dark-eyed Junco

Dark-eyed Junco

On the other hand, this friendly resident and its songs never, ever get old.  In fact, I even have it on my license plate.  Kudos to you, Maine and Massachusetts, for choosing it as your state bird.

Black-capped Chickadee

Black-capped Chickadee

Something about the colder months brings out the woodpeckers.  The Downy is a common sight, but it sure is dapper.

Downy Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

You can’t quite fully appreciate this bird’s nape and awkward perching ability unless you view it from behind.

Downy Woodpecker

Though the Downy’s bigger cousin, the Hairy Woodpecker, wasn’t up for a photo shoot, the much-cooler, poorly named Red-bellied Woodpecker has been bellying up to the feeder quite regularly this fall.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker – if you look real close you can see just a hint of red on his belly right between his two legs.

This has to be one of my favorite yard-birds.  It is a real stunning bird. Marin has even taken notice and is quite proud of herself for getting the name right.  The only reason this bird isn’t called a Red-headed Woodpecker is that a much more deserving species has already claimed that name.  Regardless, because it is so good-looking in its own right, it does deserve more than just one obligatory photo in this blog post.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

One of the more exciting yard birds – exciting because of its rarity and not because of its beauty, is the Purple Finch.  The females are not so purply, but given this was only their second appearance here ever, I was pretty thrilled to see these two girls from the north.

Purple Finch females and House Sparrow male

Purple Finch females and House Sparrow male

On par with the Purple Finch both for its geographical origins and its infrequency at our house is the Pine Siskin.

Pine Siskin

Pine Siskin

Prior to this fall we’d only ever had them here once before.  In fact, we’ve never seen a Pine Siskin anywhere outside of our yard.  This fall we’ve had 3-4 of them that have been showing up for a few days in a row now.  I hope they stick around.

Pine Siskin

Pine Siskin

We are burning through lots of seed right now, but it’s worth it.  They provide lots of entertainment.  The best part is that these birds are the birds that will be with us for the duration of the winter season.  Regular visitors that are not pictured include White-breasted Nuthatch, Eurasian-Collared Dove, Mourning Dove, Hairy Woodpecker, and our delightful pair of Northern Cardinals.  The cardinals tend to feed right at dawn and dusk which doesn’t allow for good photography.  They, too, are a family favorite.  Not only are all these birds around for the season, but we have more northern birds to look forward to! Though the Canadian winter finch forecast is a mixed bag, we are expected to get some Common Redpolls.  And if there’s enough of them, there’ll be a Hoary mixed in.  We certainly won’t have the Redpoll Mania like we had two years ago, but any day now they should show up.  I also am hoping that we will have a Northern Shrike in the yard for the third winter in a row.

Though the yard-birding has been pretty good, the itch to explore new turf and tally new birds is growing.  This weekend Evan and I will be gone on a two-night trip to check out the birds of Lake Superior’s north shore.  Double-digit life birds is a very real possibility. Stick around.

Sax-Zimmin’ with Dad and Grousin’ with Evan

IMG_0920Last week we enjoyed an extra-long weekend due to fall break, so we made the 265-mile trek home to northern Minnesota to visit our families and enjoy the beautiful northwoods. Going up north is always a delight, but doing so in the fall is special treat.  The stunning colors, the perfect temps, and the sweet smell of decaying Aspen leaves all remind us of this great land in which my wife and I grew up.  Let’s not forget the birds, though.  Northern Minnesota has its own species of interest that are not found in most of the state or the country for that matter. To that end, I had been coveting some recent pictures in my Facebook feed of Great Gray Owls in Tamarack trees in the Sax-Zim Bog.  The Bog is only 45 minutes south of my parents’ place, so I usually try to hit it up each time I go home.

Since Great Grays are crepuscular, the best times to see them are in the hour of first light and the hour of last light. We arrived at Mom and Dad’s in the early afternoon, but after a couple hours of visiting, Dad and I were headed south to try to find a Great Gray before dark. I never get tired of seeing this owl and the possibility of seeing them in the golden yellow Tamaracks was very appealing.  Tamaracks are a conifer found in boggy land, and their needles are green in the summer, turn gold in the fall, and then drop like the leaves of deciduous trees.  They are as fascinating as they are beautiful, especially when their fallen needles transform gravel roads to streets of gold.

Dad and I trolled up and down McDavitt Road several times at 5 MPH, scanning every snag and every possible perch for the Great Gray Ghost. This was the road where they’d been seen within the last week, so it was where we concentrated our search.  I was hoping to see an owl, get my desired shots, and then take some scenery shots to show off the yellow landscape of the Tamaracks interspersed with the vivid green of the Black Spruce. But, every possible second of remaining daylight was given to the search, and we were coming up empty.  I did stop to take a picture of a porcupine snoozing in a Tamarack.  Whether he’s lazy or relaxed, I just couldn’t resist the photo-op.

porcupine

porcupine

I’m afraid the porcupine was the only interesting thing we’d see in the Bog.  There were hardly any birds around, let alone any interesting species.  The next morning I continued my owl hunt closer to home as they have been found within 5 miles of my folks’.  I have yet to see one so close, but I’m determined! That determination will have to carry me forward because my luck was no different on this outing.  The birding was better than in the Sax-Zim Bog, though, as I found some Gray Jays and a couple of Ruffed Grouse.  The skittish grouse bolted when I popped up through the sunroof for a picture.

Speaking of grouse, my previous fall breaks in the northwoods used to be consumed with me pursuing Ruffed Grouse with a shotgun.  On the surface it may seem a bit of a contradiction that I’m a birder who hunts.  However, it is that interest in nature and wildlife that comes with hunting that helped propel me into this obsessive birding habit. Though I still hunt on a limited basis (just Ruffed Grouse and Ring-necked Pheasants), it is is not as interesting to me as birding, where I can experience the thrill of the hunt and the beauty of nature without the restrictions of seasons, state lines, and bag limits.  The thrill of locking eyes with a Great Gray is much more appealing. Maybe I’m just growing up.  When I saw the two grouse I wasn’t even interested in grabbing my gun out of the back of the car.

Despite my shift into birding, I still have a young boy and old dog who very much would like to chase some game.  So one morning I took Evan and my Yellow-Lab, Faith, on a short walk on my parents’ 80 acres.  Faith led the way with a vigor that belied her age (she lives for this), and Evan was several paces behind me.  We were hunting on trails in an area with young Aspens (about 10-15 years old).  It is perfect habitat that produces grouse every year.  This year was no exception as all of us, dog included, were startled by the pounding wings of our first grouse.  Though it was close, none of us saw it because of how thick the woods were.  That’s how it often goes.  We soldiered on and hiked on a trail carpeted in clover, a favorite food of the Ruffed Grouse.  The surrounding woods here were young Aspen trees 4-5 feet high growing up and around the stumps and logs of the mature Aspen stand the was here just a couple years ago.  Going off trail would be an impossible task.  Anyhow, when I paused at a bend along the trail, there was an explosion of wings to my left from the thick young trees and tangle of downed logs. Two grouse rocketed out.  I could only see one and only for a split second because of the surrounding trees and brush.  I fired a couple of times but missed.  It didn’t bug me.  As Faith was now investigating the scent of these birds (she was a little late) and I was contemplating the miss, a third grouse got up from the same spot!  Again, I only saw it briefly and fired the last shell I had in my gun.  No luck.  Ruffed Grouse are probably the most difficult game bird to hit on the fly because they live in the woods where your chances of hitting them are not as good as hitting the branches and trees they fly through.  To emphasize this point, a couple of colleagues recently returned from a grouse-hunting trip, and they had 55 flushes but only 3 kills.  I was not sad over the misses.  Evan got to see some grouse flush and watch me shoot.  He was happy.  Faith was doing what she was made for.  She was happy.  I didn’t have any birds to clean and eat.  I was happy.  Plus it was really special to see three grouse together; they are normally found as singles.

My birding pursuits continued Up North.  Dad and I made a dawn raid on the Sax-Zim Bog one of the mornings, arriving there just as you could make out the silhouettes of the trees. The best we could muster were some Gray Jays in low light.  All was well – birding the Bog with Dad is a great excuse to visit and drink some coffee.  Seeing owls is just a bonus.

Gray Jay

Gray Jays and Ruffed Grouse are some nice northern Minnesota birds, but I had a great find while I was out driving on my own one afternoon.  I had seen a couple of birds fly and thought they were ducks.  The habitat wasn’t right though since there wasn’t any water around.  I drove that way and was startled to see Black-billed Magpies!! I found four in all, and one even came out to the road to pick at something.

Black-billed MagpieI remember when I first got into birding and being shocked that this cool bird could be found in Minnesota since I had never seen one in my life up to that point.  They are known to frequent the Sax-Zim Bog. In fact, the Bog is the furthest location to the east where this species breeds.  I have seen them in the Bog and in northwestern Minnesota, but I was astounded to find them so close to where I grew up.  It was hands-down the best find of the trip.

I had better bog-birding outside of Sax-Zim on this trip.  Perhaps the only thing the Bog has on the birding scene around my parents’ place is the number of birders scouring it. Given the recent finds though, I might have to keep up the lone-rangering.  When I finally find a Great Gray on my parents’ road, it will be all the more sweeter because it’s close to home far from where birders trod.  The hunt will resume at Thanksgiving, and I can’t wait.

My Kandiyohi Twohee

Last weekend I did some lifering on my own.  Normally I don’t write about such outings, but one of my finds was just too good to not share with the bird nerds at large.  And this bird wasn’t even a lifer.  My target for the day was the Winter Wren, a little brown bird that is quite unremarkable except for the fact that it has evaded my life list. Checking eBird, I had seen reports at our latitude of this stub-tailed gnome of the northern coniferous forests.  So I decided it was time to head to Robbins Island Park in Willmar and follow Ron Erpelding’s advice of walking around the edge of the small slough in the woods there to find this skulker.

It was a horribly windy day, but the slough was tucked in a depression in the woods making it a calm, sunny place.  The birds loved it.  I immediately saw all kinds of activity.  Most of the birds were White-throated Sparrows, but I also saw Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  And there was this curious Eastern Phoebe.

Eastern Phoebe

Eastern Phoebe

I followed Ron’s advice and made one complete lap around the slough, walking through tangled brush and grass at the edge of the cattails.  My hopes were lifted at the end of my first loop when a wren flushed up.  I could see it was a House Wren because of its lighter coloration and longer tail.  Then almost immediately another wren popped up.  This one was dark and small…but a much bigger, more active bird stole my attention away from what I am claiming as my Winter Wren lifer.  There, ahead of me, in a brush pile was an obvious Eastern Towhee thrashing about in the branches!  I could not believe my eyes.

Eastern TowheeThe brownish coloration on the head and back indicated it was a female.  The male is jet-black instead of brown.  Male or female, it didn’t matter.  This was a good-looking bird and a very rare bird for our county.  How rare? I looked back through the database of bird sightings at the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union’s website and determined this was only the sixth unique Eastern Towhee to ever be documented in Kandiyohi County. Personally, this was only the second Eastern Towhee I’ve ever seen.  They just aren’t common in Minnesota as a whole.  This was also my second towhee species for Kandiyohi County – in a weird-twist of birding fate last spring, I found the even more rare vagrant Spotted Towhee before I ever saw an Eastern Towhee.  Both of these finds were the first of their respective species to be documented in eBird for Kandiyohi.  It’s always fun to make a solid contribution to the birding history of the region.

Eastern Towhee

Eastern Towhee

Below is a map from Robert Janssen’s Birds in Minnesota that shows the range of the Eastern Towhee, or Rufous-sided Towhee as it was formerly called.

Rufous-sided Towhee range map in Minnesota - Credit Robert Janssen in Birds in Minnesota

Rufous-sided Towhee range map in Minnesota.  Credit: Robert Janssen’s Birds in Minnesota

The Eastern Towhee dwells in deciduous forests, and this range map coincides very nicely with the hardwoods or deciduous forest biome of Minnesota, shown in the blue section of the map below.  The Arrowhead region is the pinelands or coniferous forest biome, and the large green section is the prairie biome.  Kandiyohi County is primarily in the prairie biome, but the northern part of the county clips that blue hardwoods section.  So it is possible to find the Eastern Towhee in parts of the county, but it is extremely uncommon.

The biomes of Minnesota. Credit - Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

The biomes of Minnesota. Credit – Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

 

The bottom line is that the Eastern Towhee is a very good bird here.  And it made for a very fun birding outing.

Eastern Towhee

Eastern Towhee

Other than the towhee, I’m pretty sure I saw a couple more Winter Wrens skulking into grasses.  I definitely did not get solid looks or pictures but they had the right GISS (General Impression of Size and Shape).  It was not a solid lifer by any means, but one I feel confident in counting. Regardless, it was not the best bird of the day.

I called Steve right away when I found the Eastern Towhee because I knew he would need this bird for the county.  We never could refind it for him, but he was able to see it the next day in the exact same spot.  A rare bird is fun in itself, but it’s always nice when a good find can be shared with someone else.

A One-Two Knockout: Black-bellied Plover and American Golden-Plover

Every cloud has a silver lining as they say, so when Marin’s daycare was closed last week due to an outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, I had a couple days at home that allowed me to check Carlson’s Dairy for shorebirds.  Specifically my targets lately have been the Black-bellied Plover and American Golden-Plover as we are currently in their southern migration window.  A couple weeks ago Steve found two Black-bellied Plovers at Carlson’s still in breeding plumage, but circumstances did not allow me to get out there.  Then a second-hand report of two American Golden-Plovers from just a week ago was giving me the itch to try for these two plover species before another fall migration passed.

Last Thursday our summer weather abruptly ended.  The weekend prior we were camping in unseasonably hot weather (84°) with unseasonably tenacious mosquitoes. It was awful.  On this day, however, the bipolar month of September showed its true ugly side – strong winds approaching 30 mph and temps in the low 40s.  I figured the sudden change in weather might knock some interesting migrants out of the sky. After I dropped Evan off at school, Marin and I went to Carlson’s to see what kind of fallout might be waiting.

At first glance it was slim pickings – nothing but some flocks of Green-winged Teal, Canada Geese, and a handful of shorebirds.  One of the shorebirds was a little bulkier, though.  I nabbed some pictures and knew that I had one of my two target birds.  Unfortunately I hadn’t studied up on juvenile plumages and couldn’t identify it on the spot.  Getting home I determined that I had my lifer Black-bellied Plover.   A breeding plumaged adult would have been preferred, but this bird was still handsome in its own right and a nice addition to the life list.  It also had the added bonus of being #200 on my Kandiyohi County eBird list.

Juvenile Black-bellied Plover

Black-bellied Plover

Black-bellied Plover

Juvenile Black-bellied Plover

It was a good learning experience to sit down at home that morning with my Sibley’s after-the-fact and go over the finer ID points of a juvenile Black-bellied Plover vs. the very similar-looking juvenile American Golden-Plover.  Little did I know how soon I would put that knowledge to the test.

I picked Evan up from school that afternoon and asked him if he wanted me to drive him out to Carlson’s to see the Black-bellied Plover I had found in the morning.  He said he was up for it, so I was now making my second trip to the shorebird spot that day.  I was confident the bird would still be there as the hurricane winds were sure to ground anything for the day.

I was a bit cavalier about my birding.  I had left both pairs of binoculars in the other vehicle; all I had was my camera.  No big deal, I thought since there were only a handful of shorebirds to sift through.  Well, when we got there the scene had changed from the morning.  There were now more birds.  The huge, exposed mudflats were hoppin’. There were Pectoral Sandpipers.

Pectoral Sandpiper

Pectoral Sandpiper

There were Solitary Sandpipers.

Solitary Sandpiper

Solitary Sandpiper

And there were about 50 DunlinXGreen-winged Teal hybrids all over the mudflats making it very difficult for a guy with just a camera to pick out a similar-sized Black-bellied Plover.

Green-winged Teal

Green-winged Teal

Then Evan hollered, “Dad! I see it!”  I don’t know how the kid does it.  He’s never looked at birds through binoculars.  He had never seen a Black-bellied Plover.  And here he picked out the plover camouflaged against the drab, muddy background not far from the road.  He’s got a keen sense of bird shapes and movements.  That very day before we got to Carlson’s, Evan told me the kids in his gifted and talented group had to answer a variety of questions earlier in the day.  One question was to name their favorite bird.  He said that the only bird the other kids could come up with was a Bald Eagle.  Not only does my kid know that a Black-bellied Plover exists, but he can pick one out having never seen one. {Proud birder parent moment.}

I might be giving Evan a little too much credit, though.  As I started snapping new pictures of what I presumed to be the same Black-bellied Plover, my morning’s plover study caused me to take pause with this bird. The smaller head, smaller pointed bill, and grayish undersides that I was seeing were spot on for the juvenile American Golden-Plover! It was unbelievable that I had now seen the two “big” plovers in the same day!

American Golden-Plover

I told Evan what I was confident we had and his response was, “You’re welcome, Dad, for finding you a life bird.” Not just for me either.  I called Steve up right away and got him on the road since he had never seen one before.  He had no trouble finding and viewing it.  Neither did we as the AGPL kept coming closer to the road.

American Golden-PloverFinally it came in to crushing distance. Boom.

American Golden-Plover

American Golden-Plover

While we enjoyed this lifer very much, I kept up the search for the Black-bellied Plover so Evan could get it too.  Whether I was handicapped with my limited optics or whether it flew away, we just couldn’t come up with it.  Evan was okay with that.

These two plover species are by no means easy in any part of the state.  To get both of them as life birds on the same day still blows my mind.  And to think if I hadn’t studied or if Evan hadn’t been along, it wouldn’t have happened. So, thanks Evan!  But as incredible as this day was, the following day would prove to be just as exciting as I would get a life look at another bird and then quickly turn my attention away from it and toward a much more unexpected non-lifer.

Squeezing a Lifer out of a Busy Life

I’m quite shocked, frankly, at how quickly it came.  I’ve long been familiar with the busy lives that kids and teens lead both in and out of school.  Parents have long shook their heads and rolled their eyes while saying, “Just you wait.”  Though expected, I never realized just how soon our family would be caught up in the tornado of our kids’ extra-curricular interests.  Mondays are the worst of it.  Evan has both piano lessons and Cub Scouts that day, and they are not back-to-back nor are they immediately after school.

So on Monday, September 22nd when I picked Evan up from school and we had an hour to kill before piano, it dawned on me that we had enough time to check out Carlson’s Dairy, the premiere shorebird spot in Kandiyohi County.  Randy had called the day before with a fantastic report: a lone American Avocet, Long-billed Dowitchers, and Black-bellied Plovers.  The latter two would be lifers.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get out there the day Randy called.  So hopefully there might still be something waiting for us on this burst of Monday birding.

Turns out there was.  I found three dowitchers.  We had never seen Long-billed or Short-billed, so it was a lifer for sure.  I marked it as a Long-billed Dowitcher since Randy had made that call the day before based on the date of migration.  We were in the middle of the migration window for Long-billed Dowitchers and had just passed the Short-billed Dowitcher window.  Later on I was able to use the humpback shape and excessively long bills to confirm they were dowitchers of the long-billed variety.

Long-billed Dowitcher

Short-billed Dowitcher

Long-billed Dowitcher and Short-billed Dowitcher Lifers!

Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitcher

I’ve always been amused by birds that scratch themselves like a dog or cat, but it was especially delightful to see a dowitcher itching.

Short-billed Dowitcher

Satisfied with a lifer and the best photos I could muster (shorebirds at Carlson’s Dairy are always far from the road), it was a bonus to see some other cool birds.  That American Avocet was still around.  It was pretty swell to see my first one in winter-plumage.  They are not a bird that we get every year during spring and fall migrations. In fact, when I uploaded my photo to the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union’s website, it was recorded as a first fall record for Kandiyohi County.  Neato.

American Avocet in winter plumage

American Avocet in winter plumage

I also wasn’t expecting to see a Northern Pintail.

Northern Pintail

Northern Pintail

There really was nothing left to see other than some common migrating shorebirds and waterfowl.  We came and scooped up the goodies in the half hour we had to bird before having to get to piano lessons. The lifer Long-billed Dowitcher and the American Avocet made for a tidy haul on this brief excursion.  It was efficient lifering – the best, and often only, kind of lifering in a whirlwind life.

The Loggerhead Shrike – Threatened in Minnesota but Living Large in Kandiyohi County

Loggerhead Shrike along Co. Rd. 118 about 2 miles east of MN Hwy 9

Though it looks a lot like its Northern Shrike cousin which can be found pretty regularly in the winter months all over Minnesota (they’ve even been in my yard couple times), the Loggerhead Shrike is a summertime bird that is tough to find in Minnesota.  Really tough. Other birders in the county often recall Loggerhead sightings in the county as a rate in birds seen per decade.  It’s a rare event indeed.  In fact, the Loggerhead Shrike is scarce throughout the state and was deemed a Minnesota threatened species by the DNR in 1984 and is now being considered as a Minnesota endangered species.  Recent surveys by the DNR have found fewer than 30 nests in the state.  This species used to be more common.  Its decline in population has been attributed to grassland habitat loss through more rural development, more intensive row-crop farming, and the encroachment of brush and shrubs on grasslands.  Additionally the increased use of pesticides may be cutting down on the shrikes’ food supply since they prey on insects.

I have had the good fortune of seeing Loggerhead Shrikes a couple times in Minnesota – twice at Felton Prairie in Clay County and once along a roadside near Herman in Grant County.  But I had been wanting to see one in Kandiyohi County.  Joel Schmidt found one earlier this spring, but it was probably just passing through because I was never able to get on it.

Jeff Weitzel also had seen one in the county by Willmar High School this spring.  I chased after that one a couple times but could never locate it.  Then, a couple weeks ago I got a text from Jeff that he saw one again at the high school and I later found out that he’d seen a shrike off and on there throughout the summer.  I went out that day several hours after I got the text and was able to get my Kandiyohi County Loggerhead.  A great bird to see anywhere in the state, but especially fun to see one just a few miles from home.

Loggerhead Shrike

Loggerhead Shrike

Joel Schmidt went to see the bird the next day and amazingly he found three shikes! Better yet was that two of them were juveniles.  This was an historic find because the Loggerhead Shrike has never been known to nest in Kandiyohi County before.  It was a banner day.

I went out the following day to hopefully see all these birds to document this finding for eBird.  I lucked out.  Not only did I see Joel’s three, but I found one more for a total of four birds!  The three juveniles obliged me by posing together briefly in the same tree.  How do you like that photo documentation, eBird?

Loggerhead Shrike

Loggerhead Shrike

Loggerhead Shrike

Loggerhead Shrike

I enjoy this bird a lot. To not only see one close so to home but also to know there is a little Loggerhead factory going on is quite special.  The habitat at the high school is ideal because there is nearly a half square mile of undeveloped prairie land interspersed with tree rows and sporadic shrubs.  Much of this land is owned by the school or is part of the Willmar Wildlife Management Area.  Because Loggerhead Shrikes have strong site fidelity when it comes to nesting and because this land will remain undeveloped, I am hoping that we will have many Loggerhead Shrikes for years to come.  The more I bird the more I have come to understand how fragile certain species are and how important conservation is for the maintenance and revival of such species.  This little success story is encouraging for future birds and birders.

This Crew Breaks for Lifers

It’s not done.  Nope.  Home improvement enthusiasts will be let down while birding aficionados will rejoice that we have not let some silly bathroom remodel stop us from birding rather than the other way around.  But I’ll throw a bone to the former group by saying that we are getting there.  Like a jigsaw puzzle nearing its completion, the bathroom’s starting to fall now with rapid, visible changes taking place daily.  The truth is that I used to enjoy such work, but now it’s a chore — a horrible, dirty, dusty, cementy, go-to-the-eye-doctor-to-remove-a-foreign-object-embedded-in-the-cornea kind of chore. Each day that I go to my little 7x7x7 cube to endure such misery, I secretly hope that call or that email will come in alerting us to a birding emergency.  Last weekend as I was getting set to start working on mudding and taping the drywall, such a call came in.  It was Joel.  He had a Black-crowned Night Heron for us.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Time to roll.

Our list of life bird needs for our area is so short that all the guys here know it fairly well. All that remain are a handful of elusive and reclusive birds as well as a few shorebirds. The Black-crowned Night Heron is one such needed lifer.  And one such needed work break.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

The photo is not much to look at, but we were fighting some serious distance.

Evan MarinIt’s a good thing Joel came out to point it out to us.  Even with the right location, I doubt I ever would have found the heron.  Evan felt the need to point this one out to his sister. It was pretty cute.

Evan Marin

After this we went to Kandiyohi County’s main shorebird spot, Carlson’s Dairy just west of Pennock.  We were after another lifer Joel had for us, the Semipalmated Plover.  We couldn’t find one at Carlson’s though. Try as we might, we just could not turn this young Killdeer into our bird.

Juvenile Killdeer

Juvenile Killdeer

Besides the little life bird excursion, the Blue Grosbeak searches, and all the in-state and out-of-state trips, I’ve been procastinating the bathroom project by hunting locally for another would-be lifer, the Wood Thrush.  A couple weeks ago Evan and I went to a spot marked out by Joel north of Sibley State Park.  We were successful in hearing our bird, two of them actually. It was another story seeing this brush-loving understory dweller. I guess we can only count it as a heard-only lifer, an oxymoron in the language of birders.  It’s tough to be so close but so blind.  At least I knew the song well now – owned it in fact.  So much was the case that as I was sitting by Melissa on the couch that evening while she was playing Hay Day on her iPad, the background farm sounds reached out and grabbed me.  I hollered for her to turn up the volume as I put my ear to the speaker.  And there it was, clear as a bell. Mixed in with the farm animal noises was a singing Wood Thrush.  Awesome, but also very cruel to be taunted by this repetitive bird song.

Wood Thrushes must love farms because another birding friend, Brad, called me a week or so later saying he had a Wood Thrush at his farm place. Off we went instead of doing work on the bathroom.  This time, though, we neither heard nor saw the bird even though we were hot on its tail. Argh.

But this story of procrastination does have a good finish even if the bathroom does not yet have the same thing.  Randy was at Carlson’s the other day and said there were Semipalmated Plovers all over the place.  Sweet.  Evan declined to go with me — he’s been burned by this bird too many times at this spot which is nearly a half hour away.  He had a farm to build on Hay Day and Wood Thrushes to listen to.

So I went to Carlson’s solo and put the Semipalmated Plover to rest.

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

As a bonus I was able to use a recording to lure in one of several calling Soras, another heard-only lifer at this point. It was magical as I watched the ditch grass move like a snake where a Sora was sprinting his way toward me.  And then, he poked his head out in a small clearing allowing me to see his bright yellow beak.  He sized me up and then quickly disappeared once again into the grasses.  Two more life birds on the books. The wish-list for local stuff is really getting short now.

I suppose, though.  It’s time to get that bathroom knocked out.  But even if I find myself distracted by going out on the roads chasing a migrant, a vagrant, or a hermit, I’m still doing bathroom research.  The ingenuity of this farmer proves I have so much more to learn.

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By-product Birds of a Blue Grosbeak Search

As much fun as it’s been to find Blue Grosbeaks, I’ve had some other fun bird sightings while prowling the countryside looking for those blue birds.  This is a quick post (a quick post is a fun post) where I’ll display these bonus birds in ascending order of rarity.

First up is an adult male Orchard Oriole.  Prior to this summer I had never seen a mature male.  Now I seem to run into them regularly, and this one even let me take a couple pictures before it disappeared.

Adult male Orchard Oriole

Adult male Orchard Oriole

Orchard Oriole

What could be better-looking and more rare than an Orchard Oriole?  How about this fine Red-headed Woodpecker.  Seeing these guys never gets old.  I have to stop for every one.

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpecker

But what could possibly top a Red-headed Woodpecker? Read on, and you’ll see. Randy and I were out driving the southern part of Kandiyohi County checking out a probable Blue Grosbeak site (at least it looked that way on the satellite photos).  It turns out the site was a bust, far from Blue Grosbeak habitat.  It was a huge marsh.  All was not lost, though.  Since Randy was driving I was checking out all the hawks we’d see. Normally I don’t check hawks too closely because we basically just have Red-taileds. I’m sure glad I took the time to look up at this hawk though because it was a Swainson’s!  I couldn’t believe it.  I just saw one for the first time ever a couple weeks prior and now I see one in Minnesota, in my own county no less!  Randy can only recall seeing a Swainson’s Hawk four or five times Kandiyohi County in his 25 years of birding.  It was a magnificent sight.

Swainson's Hawk

Swainson’s Hawk

Swainson's Hawk

The Blue Grosbeak hunt goes on.  Finding Blue Grosbeaks has been fun, but with birds like these it’s fun even if we don’t find any.  But the Blue Grosbeak hunt isn’t the only thing that’s been going on bird-wise around here.  Coming up, we’ve even managed to squeeze in a couple lifers and document a historic nesting record for Kandiyohi County.

Investigating a Probable Range and Population Expansion of the Blue Grosbeak in Minnesota

Blue Grosbeak

Though we racked up double-digit lifers in Colorado, that trip is a distant birding memory.  The birding back home has been incredibly exciting.  More is at play than just adding a life bird or getting that beautiful photo.  Instead, there’s been some serious citizen-science going on.

Let me get to the point.  I believe that the Blue Grosbeak is expanding its range in Minnesota and growing in numbers, so I have been doing some investigating to back up my theory.  I can remember when I first became a birder how I badly wanted to see a Blue Grosbeak. Imagine my surprise then, when I learned that they are a rare, regular species in the very southwestern corner of Minnesota.  Specifically, Blue Mounds State Park in Rock County is the place to see them.  That’s where we got our lifer last year.

pass_caer_AllAm_map

Range map of the Blue Grosbeak from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology  http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/blue_grosbeak/id

But then I saw them further to the northeast at Cottonwood in each of the last two years when they were discovered by Garrett Wee.  I started to get curious about this species growing in numbers when Garrett reported them two years in a row.  Additionally he found a nest this year.  The site fidelity was intriguing.

Randy Frederickson furthered my curiosity when he said he was hoping to someday find a Blue Grosbeak in Kandiyohi County.  I could hardly believe that he would think it was possible, but then he told me how he and Joel Schmidt found a family of Blue Grosbeaks in Renville County just six miles south of the Renville-Kandiyohi county line in 2012.  So last week I decided to head to this location in Renville County which was the Olivia compost site.  I wanted to see if the Blue Grosbeaks were still around a couple years later.  If they were, I wanted to document them for eBird.  Some birders have been documenting their Blue Grosbeak sightings, and it is apparent that the Blue Grosbeak has gone beyond its normal Minnesota home of Rock County, the very southwestern corner of the state.

The red dot is where we live.  Blue Grosbeaks have traditionally been found in just the very southwestern corner of Minnesota which is much less territory than what this sightings map indicates

The red dot is where we live. Blue Grosbeaks have traditionally been found in just the very southwestern corner of Minnesota which is much less territory than what this sightings map indicates

I did not find any Blue Grosbeaks at the compost site where Randy and Joel found them two years prior.  Not wanting to waste a trip, I had scouted satellite imagery of the area ahead of time looking for any gravel pits or waste areas as Blue Grosbeaks prefer this type of habitat.  In our sea of green, these areas are habitat islands.  Unlike the arid southwest, this type of desert-wash habitat is rare here and makes for easy places to look for the Blue Grosbeak.  If they are in the area, they are going to be in one of these pockets of habitat.

Blue Grosbeak

I checked out the gravel pit pictured above just a mile from where the Blue Grosbeaks were seen in 2012.  Almost immediately upon arriving I heard a singing male Blue Grosbeak. I was absolutely thrilled, even more so when I finally got to lay eyes on it.

Blue Grosbeak

Blue Grosbeak at NE corner of gravel pit on west side of 300th St. just south of 840th Ave.

I was pretty pleased with the find and reported the bird to the listserv, MOU-net, so other birders could see it.  But after I was at home and studying satellite images again, I realized I didn’t fully explore the area.  It turns out that the pit I stopped at is part of about a four-mile tract of old gravel pits. I went back two days later intent to check out more of the area.  When I got to the site of the Grosbeak pictured above, I ran into Ron Erpelding and Herb Dingmann who had just seen the bird and were listening to a second bird nearly a mile away from the first one!  Now I was really excited to get my search underway.  I took every north-south road that intersected this tract of gravel deposits.  And on each road I found a singing male Blue Grosbeak!  With Ron and Herb’s bird, that made for five male Blue Grosbeaks. It was unbelievable yet believable because of the habitat I was exploring.

Locations of where I found Blue Grosbeak males; the bottom-right marker is the bird found by Ron Erpelding and Herb Dingmann

Locations of where I found Blue Grosbeak males; the bottom-right marker is the bird found by Ron Erpelding and Herb Dingmann

Blue Grosbeak at the Danube Brush Site

Blue Grosbeak at the Danube Brush Site just north of Danube on Co. Rd. 1

Blue Grosbeak

Blue Grosbeak on 280th St. south of 840th Ave. where 280th intersects the gravel pits.

Blue Grosbeak sub-adult male on 270th St. in the trees just south of 840th Ave.

Blue Grosbeak sub-adult male on 270th St. in the trees just south of 840th Ave.

Several birders have made their way to Renville County to find some of these Blue Grosbeaks.  What has been phenomenal is that they are turning up more Blue Grosbeaks at these sites and in other counties while en route!  One was found in Chippewa County by Ron and Herb that same day, and a family of three was found by Ken Larson to the west in Lac qui Parle County.  With this volume of Blue Grosbeaks so far from Rock County, it seems that this species is definitely making its home further north and east than where it is “supposed” to be.  Any bit of suitable habitat in the southern half of the state should be investigated by Minnesota birders.  I have been studying satellite imagery for any hint of gravel or waste areas in area that is dominated by agricultural fields.  I’m particularly interested in finding one here in Kandiyohi County.  We are hopeful that one will make the jump six miles north if one hasn’t already.

The green line is the Kandiyohi County and Renville County Line - Blue Grosbeaks are only six miles away!

The green line is the Kandiyohi County and Renville County Line – Blue Grosbeaks are only six miles away!

The only problem, though, is that we have no gravel pits to speak of in the southern half of our county.  The best and closest habitat, a very large area of several gravel pits, is about 30 miles northeast of all these Grosbeaks.

Blue Grosbeak

We have already been getting a lot of the necessary permissions to enter these lands to begin our search.  Hopefully we can turn one up.

It has been very exciting to not only see Blue Grosbeaks, but to be a witness to a potential range expansion.  Evan asked me the other day, “What’s the big deal about the Blue Grosbeak anyway, is it because it has that red wing-patch or something?”  Yeah, something like that.

Coming up: cool by-product birds from the Blue Grosbeak searches.