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.