Tag Archives: American Black Duck

The Minnesota Ivory Gull, A Sleigh-Assisted Bird

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You already know that birders are an odd bunch, but you may not know that they are even more so on New Year’s Day.  This is the day that a brand new year list starts and with it all kinds of eccentric behaviors.  Birders often report to one another what their first bird of the new year is.  Some, like me, squint when looking out the windows in the morning so that first bird might be a bright red Cardinal and NOT the dreaded House Sparrow.  (Mine was a Crow this year–ick).  Some birders go flying out of the gate (and all across the state) to put up a massive total of species on that first day as if to tell all others who aspire to be the top birder, “Don’t even think about it.” I’m not sure where Duluth power-birding couple, Larry and Jan Kraemer, fall on the spectrum, but they were out birding on 1 January.  And they sent shock waves through the entire Midwest birding community with a jaw-dropping confirmation of Scott Wolff’s suspected Ivory Gull.

No, no, this couldn’t be…I had just finished writing a recap post of 2015 where I concluded by saying I wanted to mellow out my birding in 2016.  But on the other hand, HOLY SMOKES I’VE GO TO GET TO DULUTH!! To the uninformed, the Ivory Gull is from the high Arctic, the land of Polar Bears and Santa Claus, and has only been to Minnesota a handful of times.  It looks like Minnesota and Wisconsin Birders have been good this year because Santa dropped off quite a present in Canal Park.

Duluth Ivory GullWillmar, of course, sent its own small delegation of eager birders to the Great Birder Assembly.  Joining me in the pursuit of a shared, epic lifer were Randy Frederickson and Joel Schmidt.  The gathering also gave my yearly and life birder lists a boost.Duluth Canal ParkHere’s what all the fuss is about:

Ivory Gull

What I noticed immediately about this striking, immature bird was the black mottling on the back and wings of this immaculately white bird and how this black/white combo  resembled the plumage of a Snowy Owl or a white-phase Gyrfalcon–all birds from the far north.

Ivory Gull

Ivory Gull

Ivory GullConditions for viewing the IVGU were awful: wave action from Lake Superior had created a thick glaze of ice over every place an observer might stand.  Never have I feared a concussion or wished I owned cleats more.  It was downright dangerous. Even the Ivory walked with trepidation.Ivory GullAt one point a birder next to me didn’t really know how to proceed off the icy knoll on which we stood.  I was getting annoyed with his prolonged hesitation.  Then I felt like a complete jerk when the older fellow asked me if I would take his arm and help him down.  As I gripped his quivering arm, I realized that this could be me in 30 or so years.  It was a reminder of how quickly life moves and why events like this are so important, why we need to experience the phenomenal while we can.  Going with friends, like Randy and Joel, make it even better, especially when celebratory beers are had at a place like Bent Paddle Brewhouse.

Before that celebration, however, there were many other birds to enjoy at Canal Park.  This adult Iceland Gull (center of the pic)  was a lifer for Joel and the first adult I had seen.

Iceland GullHere was an immature bird that is Thayer’s/Iceland intergrade.  The local Larus Jedi call him Stumpy because of his missing tail.

Iceland GullWe did see a couple of adult Thayer’s but no Glaucous Gulls this time.  Since I got the full Gull smorgasbord a month ago, besides the Ivory I was most excited about all the American Black Ducks.  I counted well over a dozen among the 300 Mallards.  They really do stand out and the proximity and sunlight made them especially photogenic on this gorgeous day. This is a duck I just don’t see enough, so this was quite enjoyable.

American Black Duck
American Black DuckAmerican Black DuckWe lingered around Canal Park for a couple hours hoping to find Joel a Great Black-backed Gull lifer, but it just wasn’t in the cards.  What was in the cards was the arrival of the longest ship known to the Great Lakes, the 1014-foot long Paul R. Tregurtha:

Paul R. Tregurtha ship

I have to tell you how much my family has wanted to see a ship, any ship, pass through the canal, under the lift bridge, and into Duluth Harbor. Evan especially has wanted to see such a thing.  How I wish he was along to see this!  He may not care about the Gull now, but this would be a heart breaker for him. We have chased ship arrivals before.  Once we were at the top of the hill in Duluth, saw a ship coming in, and raced down to Canal Park only to find it had already made it through the canal.

You can see in the above photo that the birders were not impressed and still had their vision trained on the Ivory Gull sitting on the breakwall.  Despite seeing more birders than I’ve ever seen before, the birdnerds were quickly outnumbered by hundreds of shipnerds that materialized out of nowhere. It was kind of fun, actually, to trade nerd info with a couple of 60ish ladies.  They told us all about their ship; we told them all about our Gull.  I didn’t get goosebumps like my shipnerd mates when the Paul R. Tregurtha saluted the lift bridge with its loud horn, but I was impressed nonetheless.

Paul R. Tregurtha ship

Nerd worlds collide!

Paul R. Tregurtha ship

IMG_0213An accidental rare species from the Arctic and the largest ship on the Great Lakes coming in to port made for a most exciting outing.  We had one more errand that would put this day completely up and over the top–crossing the Blatnik Bridge to Superior, Wisconsin to pick up a 2016 Gyrfalcon!  In less than a year’s time I have seen three Gyrfalcons, which still is not enough because like Jello, there’s always room for Gyr.  Photos at this distance were practically impossible, but I’m okay with that.

Gyrfalcon

2016 started off with a bang.  I shouldn’t be surprised but I always am by the unexpected things that show up.  That’s what makes this hobby so horribly addicting.  While we wait for the next twist or turn in this new year of birding, a highlight reel of my 2015 will be served up next.

Since the above post was written, two noteworthy developments have happened in the Ivory Gull story.  They are each titled below and are well worth the read, especially the second (WOW).

The Perfect Chase

I had never considered just how perfect of a chase this was until my companion Randy Frederickson posted a thank you to the Duluth area birders on the listserv.  It is not often that the birding guru posts, but when he does it is humorous and eloquent.  Enjoy.

Another wonderful bird found by Duluth area birders, but so much more. Not only a “lifer” for most of us, but how often does a chase end up where you park in a public lot for free, walk 60 yards and get phenomenal looks at your target bird? Throw in a heated visitors
center with clean bathroom facilities and could it get better? Well yes; make sure the report goes out on Friday to give us all a weekend to travel and have the bird frequent the same area long enough that almost no one can miss it. Now place it on the top of a cement wall about eye level and color it in such a way that it stands out amongst its contemporaries. Next, turn up the outside temperature so it runs about 8-10 degrees above the winter average. Heck, let’s do it on the 1st of January so the new year has an avian prelude.  Lastly, have the target bird show up among some of the most generous
(of time and talent), and Laridae literate folks in the upper Midwest and there you have it, the perfect chase hosted by wonderful birding brethren. If there is reincarnation after death, I’m coming back as an Ivory Gull and heading to Duluth for unrivaled recognition and camaraderie (but could someone please tell Peder I prefer Walleye)?

Ivory Gull-Double Trouble

Hundreds of birders have seen the Ivory Gull and many more had been making plans to get to Duluth, even coming from far-off places like Toronto and Tennessee.  Imagine the utter shock, then, when news came out today that the Ivory Gull was a victim of a predation found dead and ripped to shreds under the Blatnik Bridge on the Wisconsin side!  Here is the photographic evidence on Laura Erickson’s blog.  I didn’t feel too sorry for those Wisconsin birders who greatly envied us Minnesotans for such an addition to our state lists.  Still, an unknown and now dead IVGU on their soil on top of a fresh Packers loss to the Vikings? Ouch. I was, however, really bummed out for Gordon and Tommy as I hoped this incredible lifer would be here waiting for them in three weeks time.

A short time after that initial report, the even more unthinkable happened–someone was declaring that there was an Ivory Gull at Canal Park!  This meant one thing and one thing only: TWO Ivory Gulls, both immature birds, had hopped aboard Santa’s sleigh and were in the Duluth area.  Simply incredible. The Duluth News Tribune caught wind of the drama after the death of the first bird and had to change their story as events were unfolding.  In fact, it is their #1 trending story right now.

Winterfowling – A Black and White Affair; No Kids Please

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Things have been pretty bleak on the prairie lately as far as birds go (or as far as anything goes, actually).  The Snowy Owls packed their bags and left long ago.  Birds of the field have been in short supply or absent altogether.  Adding insult to this injury is that it has been extremely cold these past few weeks as temps have been well below zero.  Hoth is looking like a pretty good vacation destination these days both for its scenery and temps.

So what’s a birder to do?  Look at waterfowl, of course!  Wait, what? Isn’t it a frozen wasteland here? Birders know a lot of crazy, cool stuff about local, natural phenomena that the vast majority of area residents know nothing about.  One such phenomenon is knowing where open water exists in the county during the winter months.  When I got into birding a couple years ago, I was blown away to find out that several species of waterfowl have been recorded on past Willmar Christmas Bird Counts.  Heck, I was blown away to find out we had open water. I mean, every bit of water is seemingly, or should be, in a solid state, right?

Green Lake

“Let’s drive our truck on the lake by the open water,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.

The further I went down this rabbit hole of birding, the more secrets I’ve learned.  One of those secrets is that small numbers of Trumpeter Swans overwinter in the Spicer/New London area.  I was reminded of this when local birder, Coralie Jacobson, posted on Facebook that she saw a bunch of swans on the outflow of Green Lake at the northeast corner.

Green Lake

I’ve seen plenty of Trumpeters in the county, but seeing them in February is something I had never done and needed to document for eBird.  It was certainly the cure for the winter birding blues.  A couple weeks ago I drove up to Green Lake and was not disappointed. In all, I counted 19 Trumpeter Swans.  These DINCs (Double-Income No Cygnets) were enjoying quite the love fest, being all exclusive from the other swans.

Trumpeter SwansWhen not necking and acting like that adorable couple that makes people cringe, they were striking contortionist poses and looking awfully dapper in their crisp black and whites.

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Meanwhile at the other end of the Trumpeter relationship spectrum and at the other end of the outflow, this harried set of parents was leading the distracted life of a zone defense against three rambunctious teen-age cygnets.  A date night might be in order.

Trumpeter Swansssss

It turns out that the outflow of Green Lake is not the only open water around these parts in the winter.  The Crow River right in downtown New London also stays open just beneath the dam at the Mill Pond and along Central Avenue.  In late November 2014, Coralie Jacobson found herself an incredible lifer on this little stretch of river in town–an American Black Duck associating with about two dozen Mallards.  This species has been something of a nemesis bird for me, and it’s a remarkable bird for our area.  Occasionally one or two will be seen by somebody during spring migration or in the late fall if there is open water around.  I have frozen my fingers and face scanning through thousands of Canada Geese and Mallards on Foot Lake trying to pick one out that Steve had found in late 2013. Another time I was minutes late for getting to a location of a sighting.  And this particular duck that Coralie found? I think I made a half dozen trips to New London looking for this bird, hoping to finally add it to my county list and record a new Kandiyohi species for eBird. Joel found it no problem.  Counters for the CBC found it no problem.  I had lots of problems finding it.  I had so many failed attempts and it was getting deeper and deeper into winter that I had completely given up on it, settling for licking my Black Duck wound along with the still open, festering wound of missing a county Long-tailed Duck by an hour last fall.

Last week after I dropped Evan off at school on Monday, I went for a drive-about in the northern part of the county-a land I haven’t explored much.  The Black Duck was far from my mind since it was last seen two months ago. This solo venture was birding desperation, plain and simple.  I didn’t even know what I was really after.  A 2015 county Northern Shrike? Pileated Woodpecker year bird maybe? Perhaps a Snowy Owl even though I’ve used up all my SNOW luck for a decade? It felt hopeless and was even less interesting than it sounded. I decided to turn it into an eBird expedition, making notes of birds numbers/species/locations.  It was something to do, something productive anyhow.

My travels brought me by New London, so I thought I’d swing by the Crow River on Central Avenue to see if there were any Mallards to document.  I noticed that there were about 30 Mallards or so.  Interesting.  The ducks were located at a bend in the river that was not easily seen from the dam or from Central Avenue.  After some maneuvering I finally got into a position with the morning sun at my back where I could see the ducks. The conclusion of my quick scan was Mallards-every one of them, but truthfully I wasn’t even thinking that the Black Duck was a remote possibility.  It had to be gone.

American Black Duck

Anyhow, I decided I would glass the Mallards and try my best to get a careful count of males/females for eBird since it was a manageable number.  Most ducks were facing upstream with their heads constantly under water foraging for food. It’s kind of hard to count ducks that look like rocks.

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As I moved my binoculars from one bird to the next, one duck lifted its submerged head.  I saw a black cap and an olive green bill, and I literally laughed out loud.  There it was. Finally.  Had I not eBirded, I may have been long gone not knowing the Black Duck was right under my nose.  It felt SOOO good to finally see this bird here at home.  It was an A+ bird for a dull winter day–even better than if I’d found a Snowy Owl.  The icing on the cake was finding an overwintering Belted Kingfisher, an eBird rarity that I was unfortunately not able to photograph.

American Black Duck

In my early birding days I had anxieties about differentiating an American Black Duck from hen Mallards.  How silly.

American Black Duck and Mallards

Ever wonder why they call it a Black Duck?

American Black Duck

Wintefowling is tremendous fun but is not for the faint of heart, those with poor circulation or the beardless.  That said, it seems that winter’s last hurrah is waning and that warm temps are on the way.  Pretty soon there’ll be open water aplenty and waterfowl galore.  The truth is I’m going to miss these quiet winter waterfowling days when the few, the proud ducks are concentrated in tight spots.  Only the cool ones come in the winter.

Every Bird Trip Ending is a New Bird Trip Beginning

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At the end of our long day of North Shore birding, Evan and I opted to stay in Grand Marais at my brother’s vacation house instead of retiring with the rest of our group back to Duluth. Besides making for a more relaxed travel schedule, this extra night also guaranteed another crack at those ocean-going birds as well as all the oddball birds that can mysteriously show up in Grand Marais in the fall (Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Townsend’s Solitaire, etc).  Grand Marais is great town even if you’re not a birder.  With the vibe of a seaside village it attracts artists and nature lovers alike.  In addition to the birds, eating at the world’s only Sven & Ole’s Pizza was a must, and according to Evan, so was a Tom and Jerry marathon back at the house.  To each his own.

After plenty of pizza, cat&mouse antics, and sleep, it was time to get going with the new day.  We had birds to find and a state to cross.  While I was hauling our things out to the car in the pre-dawn darkness, I heard those shooting lasers that Clinton talked about – flight calls of Common Redpolls.  The rising sun revealed a whole cluster of them feeding at the tops of the birch trees in the front yard.  They were close and in the sun, so I decided I should get a proper photo of one.  I pulled up the camera on one and realized it was pretty frosty in appearance, and the bill was so small and conical.  Right away I was thinking it was a Hoary Redpoll.

Hoary Redpoll

Many Redpolls cannot be cleanly deciphered as Hoary or Common.  There is a lot of overlap, and it is all very confusing and frustrating.  People generally only claim Hoary on the most perfect specimens that exhibit all the undeniable traits of a classic Hoary.  Hoaries are rare as there may be one bird in every flock of 150-200 Common Redpolls. I’ve stared at many, many suspicious birds in my own yard trying to make the call on Hoary or not Hoary.  The general discussion on Facebook of the bird above leans toward the Hoary side.

At any rate, we were not in Grand Marais to debate Redpoll statuses.  We had birds to find. The plan was to hit up the municipal campground to look for flocks of Bohemian Waxwings and a couple of Black-backed Woodpeckers.  Up to 75 Bohemians had been seen in town a few days prior.  Since I needed to charge my camera battery that morning, we went camera-less.  The campground held some interesting birds – four Snow Buntings and two very frigid, out-of-place Meadowlark species.  However, there was nothing we were after.

We then retrieved the camera battery and drove the streets of town looking for fruit-bearing trees for Bohemians and donut-bearing gas stations for us.  We were successful on the latter.  The gypsy-like birds are completely unreliable and never did show up for us. We made one more pass through the storied campground and could only muster up a few Rusty Blackbirds.

Rusty Blackbird

After an hour of searching for the Waxwings, we gave up and headed southwest down Highway 61.  I spied an interesting-looking raptor flying the same direction as us, but I didn’t stop because the focus was back on ducks.  Either this bird passed us or there was another one just like it because Evan was exclaiming he just saw a black raptor with a white tail sitting on the power line.  I asked him if he thought we should turn around to look.  He wanted to, so we did.  The bird was a gorgeous dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk that was now on the move again back to the southwest.  So we raced ahead of it and stopped at the same overlook where we got our White-winged Scoters.  The views were spectacular.

Rough-legged Hawk

After enjoying this new, rarer flavor of RLHA, we noticed the three White-winged Scoters were continuing from the day before.  Then it was time to pop in our book-on-tape and hit the road hard, only stopping briefly at the lookouts from our trip yesterday to scan for ducks.  The story was much the same – no sea ducks.  Interestingly the day after this trip, a couple of juvenile Common Eiders were found at one of these locations – the first time since 1966.  And we missed it by a day.

Anyhow, Duluth still held something very promising for us.  It turns out that American Black Ducks are a relatively easy find along Park Point.  We needed that bird.  We can get it at home in spring and fall migration, but it’s not an easy one.  Clinton, our guide from the sea duck trip, gave us a reliable location to try for this semi-nemesis.  He said to look bayside at 38th street.  As I drove down Park Point and could see Lake Superior to my left and the bay to my right, I was not seeing ducks anywhere, not even Mallards.  This was a bad sign.  Even at 38th where the water nearly laps onto the road, there was nothing.  I checked lakeside even though Clinton said the ducks are always bayside.  Nothing.  I couldn’t believe it.  Leave it to me to screw up a sure bet.  I was settling in for defeat and driving back toward Canal Park when I caught sight of a couple of Mallards on the grass on the bayside of the road right near 38th.  I stopped and looked.  This caused these Mallards and several others who were tucked up on shore in the cove-like corner under some brush.  As they swam out into the bay, I saw that five of them were Black Ducks! This was a very satisfying lifer, perhaps the best of the trip.  It was a nice ending to a fun weekend of birding.

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American Black Duck

It’s amazing how black these ducks really look in the right light.  The male below shows some green on the top of his head which might make it a Mallard X American Black Duck hybrid.

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Here’s a better shot of the green.

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It was finally time to leave the Black Ducks and Duluth behind and hit I-35 for the 3.5 hour ride home.  I was quite content to have gotten this hoped-for duck.  I was now looking forward to a relaxing ride home with no more birding stops.  Evan and I stopped one last time to fill up the tank and empty ours.  As I was waiting for Evan, I compulsively checked my phone (a bad habit brought on by birding).  Birding friend Tony Lau had messaged me to alert me to an incredible bird discovered by Jeff Grotte back home just a few miles from where I work. Before I knew it, I was hurrying Evan to get back in the car.  It was 1:00. Darkness was coming in four hours and I had to go just over 3 hours to get to this bird. Moreover, the coming 12 inches of snow that night would make a next-day search impossible.  Never mind that the bird could up and leave at any moment.  I had to get there – fast. There would be no relaxing drive home.