Veritas Caput

In 1832, an explorer by the name of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and his men were guided by  Ozawindib, a Chippewa Indian, to the source of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota,  a small, pristine lake surrounded by beautiful White and Red Pines. Not liking the Chippewa name Omushkos Sagaeigun or Elk Lake, Schoolcraft took the last four letters of the Latin word, veritas (truth) and the first two letters of the Latin word caput (head) and came up with Itasca as a new name that he felt more adequately described the significance of the lake that served as the true head of the Mississippi.

Lake ItascaThat’s it, right there–the rocks at the bottom right of the photo above mark the terminus of Lake Itasca and the beginning of the mighty Mississippi.  Here massive hordes of humanity, some more clothed than others, take their turn walking, slipping, and selfie-ing across the rocks at the Mississippi Headwaters in Itasca State Park.

Evan Marin ItascaGetting a photo of your significant people making the famous 20-foot trek without other tourists in the frame is about as easy as seeing a Black-backed Woodpecker in the park.  Of course, both become much easier in January…

This time of year is more fun for kids, though.

Evan Marin

Evan and Marin crossing the Mississippi

Evan and Marin were not the only ones in our family being baptized this day as true Minnesotans–Melissa and I were embarrassingly also making our first walk across the headwaters.  Though that, or the impressive virgin forests of towering Pines, should have been enough motivation to finally make it to Itasca, it was another Veritas Caput that served as the impetus to get us there–Mr. Bob Janssen, a.k.a. the godfather of Minnesota birding who literally wrote a book on the subject, was leading a bird walk at Itasca State Park.  Call us groupies, call us super-fans, but we were in.

Evan Bob Janssen

Evan birding with Bob Janssen–Again!

The truth is that due to a rough night in the camper for all of us, we slept in and missed meeting up with Bob’s group to begin the bird walk. Oh well, I thought, I’ve birded with Bob before and this was more or less a beginner’s bird walk. I reasoned that Evan would have the same reaction since birds aren’t that big of a deal to him anymore. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When he woke and found out we missed the walk, he was in tears.  Apparently birds aren’t that big of a deal, but birds with BOB is still a really big deal.  Ugh.

I told Evan we would try to find the group in the 32,000 acre park.  I didn’t tell him that finding an American Three-toed Woodpecker would have been easier.  But I had read the chapter on Itasca State Park in Bob’s Birds of Minnesota State Parks, and I had a pretty good guess of what trail we might find them on.  Even still, we were an hour-and-a-half late.  It was a long shot at best.  Amazingly, and as you can tell from the photo above, we did stumble upon Bob Janssen and his followers.  Whew!

We were just in time to catch the group to find out that the next stop was the Headwaters area at the far north end of the park.  Evan and I had to make a stop at the campsite on the way where we snagged a pretty sweet FOY, the Broad-winged Hawk.

Broad-winged Hawk

We finally met back up with our group at the Headwaters parking lot and began a leisurely walk looking and listening at…nothing.  It was super quiet which was strange since fall migration should have been going on all around us.  Now pay attention to this–if you want to be a better birder, go birding with people better at it than you.  The quiet woods did not daunt the 84-years-young Bob.  You don’t get to that age and that fame without acquiring a few tricks up your sleeve. Bob was listening intently for Chickadees. Wait, what?

As soon as Bob heard a couple Black-capped Chickadees, he pulled out his mp3 player and speaker and played an Eastern Screech-Owl mobbing tape.  The recording is of a Screech giving its tremulo call and being mobbed by about a thousand pissed off Chickadees.  What happened next is that the Chickadees in real life showed up with pitchforks and torches.  That brings in the onlookers, the Warblers and Vireos.  All the sudden we were swarmed with birds that didn’t even seem to exist a minute ago–Blackburnian Warblers, Northern Parulas, a Black-throated Green, Blue-headed Vireos were just a few.

Northern ParulaThough the light was bad and some birds were changing into their fall clothes, the flurry of activity kept it exciting even if it was just over binocular views.  I did manage to photograph a cooperative juvenile Chestnut-sided Warbler.  Just as some people aren’t fond of babies (the human kind), I am not found of juvenile birds. This one I found striking, however.

Chestnut-sided Warbler

We made several stops to play the tape in somewhat open areas, like where a path crossed the Not-so-Mighty Mississippi:

Mississippi River

Fun Fact: The Mississippi flows north for several miles before it turns south.

Though many of us in the group called out sightings of birds, Bob himself had the best sighting even though I lack the photographic evidence to prove it–a beautiful male Golden-winged Warbler.  It’s always a treat to see this bird that, if we did not have the Common Loon, would make a fine choice for a state bird, since Minnesota is responsible for hosting 47% of its breeding population.  Fun Not-So-Fact: Once we hit 51%, MN will control GWWA conservation policies in North AND South America.

Like the Mississippi itself, all good things must come to an end, and we parted company with the group and said goodbye to Bob, vowing to meet up again over a Meeker County Snowy Owl or Kandiyohi County Blue Grosbeak, which has now become our customary goodbye. We declined to go to the book talk, though it would have been a chance for Bob to sign the book to me and not Evan this time. Letting bygones be bygones, it was time for Evan and I to go from birding mode back into just regular camping mode, exceptions being made, of course, for Northwoods chickens that cross the road.

Ruffed Grouse

Ruffed Grouse

The Grouse and the aforementioned Broad-winged Hawk were year birds for me. Normally I wouldn’t care about such a thing, but with all my out-of-state travels I figured 2015 was my best chance of ever breaking 300 in a single year.  I’m very close, but it’s still going to be a stretch. Thanks to Melissa who woke me up at 1 AM and alerted me to a calling Barred Owl, I made another stride toward my goal.

That goal, along with the mouth-watering prospect of seeing another Black-backed Woodpecker, propelled me to go on one last birding hike in the early morning on our last day of camping.  Sadly, I did not encounter any of the shadowy Woodpeckers on Schoolcraft Trail, but I did find another year bird and get my first ever photos of a Brown Creeper.

Brown Creeper

Brown Creeper

Birding with Bob, nabbing four year birds (one a photographic first), and crossing the Headwaters made for a great inaugural trip to Itasca State Park. I am quite remiss, though, that I did not show you pictures of the incredible Red and White Pines of the park.  Come for the river, stay for the Pines, the t-shirts say.  Next time, which I can guarantee you there will be a next time, there shall be pictures of the Pines, and if we are all lucky, there shall be Black-backed Woodpeckers on them!

Iron Range Birding Scraps

In any project there is inevitably scrap material left over.  Some pieces of lumber, fabric, etc. are just too good to discard, or more likely, the memories of long-gone, thrifty grandparents guilt us in to keeping these items.  So we pile our garages and closets full of such things until they can be re-purposed, which never, ever happens. Except for today. The trip up north yielded two solid projects with the Great Gray Owl adventure and the Golden-crowned Sparrow chase, but there were plenty of good birding scraps that I couldn’t waste.  In fact, they might even be worthy of being displayed on my 4th-grade science fair tri-fold that was stowed away in Grandma’s garage for decades.

Not every bird scrap here will have a photo.  That’s just how it goes sometimes.  Good bird sightings are good bird sightings period.  So let’s kick off this post with the birds that were not photographed.

Black-billed Magpie

Black-billed Magpie is a great northern Minnesota bird, and the Sax-Zim Bog is the furthest-east that it is known to breed.  Lately they have been popping up all over the Iron Range in the open agricultural areas.  I found four a couple months ago just a few miles from my parents’ house. This trip I saw one fly across my in-laws’ gravel road.  This was my best non-Great Gray Owl/non-Golden-crowned Sparrow sighting of the trip. I have traveled that road for almost 20 years and have never seen one there before.

Rough-legged Hawk

This is flat-out one of the best hawks.  Many migrate through Minnesota during late fall, and since we’ve been birders I have seen them every time we visit up north this time of year.  I am now starting to associate Thanksgiving with this bird instead of the turkey.  Anyhow, just moments before that Black-billed Magpie, I got my best-ever look at a gorgeous light-morph perched on a power pole by the road.  We were on our way to a family gathering so I didn’t have time to stop and photograph it.  I did drive real slow when I went by, and that hawk and I locked eyes while it pivoted its head watching me when I went past, just like an owl would do.  Super-cool.

Pine Grosbeaks

This bird was seemingly everywhere on the trip.  I bet I saw over two dozen in various places.  My sightings occurred exclusively as birds getting grit from the middle of roads.  Anytime I stopped to get a photograph, they would split. Though I have seen gobs of these things on feeders long before I was a birder, this bird has eluded my camera since I got into birding.  There was that one crummy cell-phone pic a couple years ago.  I guess this one is a step-up.  FYI – rolling down the windows of a toasty vehicle and then immediately taking pictures in the cold does not work; the heat waves from the car create interference in the picture.  Instead, keep the windows down a bit as you roll along or turn down the heat.

Pine Grosbeak

Northern Shrikes

What birder doesn’t love a shrike of any stripe?  Fall is the time when the Northerns replace the Loggerheads.  Unlike the rare Loggerhead, the Northern Shrike is not terribly uncommon anywhere in the state during the winter.  I found two when I drove through the Sax-Zim Bog on my way home from Duluth.

Northern Shrike

Northern Shrike

Ruffed Grouse – aka “grouse” to Minnesotans at large, aka “partridge” to Iron Rangers

We went to Melissa’s Grandma’s house on Turkey Day.  This is always a fascinating place to do some birding while eating Grandma Evelyn’s delicious food and sipping some coffee.  Pine Grosbeaks, Evening Grosbeaks, a Great Gray Owl next door.  You know, the usual stuff.  Knowing this, I walked up to the house with my camera in hand, eager to see what goodies were on Evelyn’s feeders.  A large bird at the top of a birch tree immediately caught my attention.

Ruffed Grouse

It was a grouse! Grouse in northern Minnesota are practically as common as chickens in a barnyard, but it was fun to see one so tame and without a care in the world other than stuffing his crop with all the birch catkins he could eat.  Apparently he knew he wasn’t the bird of choice on this day and was safe from those who craved poultry. In fact, I walked all around the tree right underneath him while he busily ate the catkins.

Ruffed Grouse

Ruffed Grouse

This was a real treat to be able to photograph this bird so close.  The Ruffed Grouse has been a favorite bird of mine ever since I was a 13-year-old kid and had one flush across a wooded path right in front of me, and then it strutted on a log.  One thing I particularly enjoyed about this grouse at Evelyn’s house was its long, red-phase tail.  The long tail indicates that this is a male.  Ruffed Grouse tails come in a gray phase or a red phase with a lot of variation in between.  Most of the birds I see are gray phase. Here is a sample of this variation from Gordon Gullion’s The Ruffed Grouse. Gullion states that there are up to 30 color variations in the tails and provides loads of statistics on the rarity of the different types.  The best tail feather I ever found as a kid was a gray-phase tail with an orange sub-terminal band instead of the traditional black.

Ruffed GrouseFun fact from Gullion’s book: It is well-known that Ruffed Grouse completely burrow into powdery snow to keep warm on cold winter days.  However, what is not well known is that the Great Gray Owl is the only known predator that can hear the grouse in their burrows and pluck them out of the snow!  How cool is that?! Here I thought Great Grays just ate small rodents.  As Gullion says, it’s fortunate for Ruffed Grouse that Great Gray Owls are not very numerous in northern Minnesota.  If I ever witnessed such predation, I might have to hang up my binoculars and camera because it just wouldn’t get any better than that.  Fortunately, Evelyn’s grouse doesn’t have to worry about such things yet with low snow totals.  But he sure looks plump for the pickin’.

Ruffed Grouse

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.