Guide Series: The Quest for the Great Gray Ghost in the Sax-Zim Bog

Over the years several gracious and talented birders have taken this novice birder into habitats and lands both near and far to help me see a new bird or two or twenty.  Recently I found myself in a bit of a role reversal for the first time, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.  My good Arizona birding friends Tommy DeBardeleben and Gordon Karre decided to take me up on an offer to show them around northern Minnesota in the wintertime to go after our impressive Owls, specifically the Great Gray Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, and Snowy Owl.  Not only is it nerve-wracking to produce the winter classics because of the fickle nature of these Owls, but it is even more so when the people I was leading have produced my top Arizona targets for me over…

Elegant Trogonand over…

Painted Redstartand over.

Rufous-capped Warbler

Was I feeling the pressure? You better believe it.  And with the driest year I have ever seen for the Big 3, my stress level was rising with everyday leading up to the trip.  Despite an abnormal October influx, Snowy Owls seemingly disappeared and numbers returned to pre-irruption year levels.  Great Grays were fairly abundant in the Sax-Zim Bog but very, very fickle about showing themselves.  The outlook for Northern Hawk Owls was even more depressing as there were only a couple reports out of northwest Minnesota.  I was feeling the squeeze.  But pressure aside, I really just wanted these guys to see these Owls.  These birds are simply just amazing, and I wanted to share them with my friends.  Now, I know Tommy and Gordon are classy guys who understand there are no guarantees in birding, but I had invited them to the home court and they had invested a lot of time and money to see the wonders of which I spoke.  I attempted to counteract my stress with the only antidote I knew: preparation. Sometime in late fall I began to drink from the fire hose that is the multiple streams of birding information out there: multiple FB groups, the MOU database, the MOU-net listserv, and eBird. Living far from the north, I was only able to do a tad bit of actual scouting over Christmas which is, like, ancient history and completely useless when it comes to a birding trip the end of January. So I reached out to my contacts who had much better, more recent intel than me.  Minnesota Nice is never more epitomized than it is in its birders as people like Clinton Nienhaus, Jason Mandich, and Jeff Grotte generously gave me their up-to-the-minute knowledge, and in some cases, their eyes to help this trip be a success. You take that expert info and put a crazy Owl hat on a crazy-good Owler and good things are bound to happen.

tommy

Our pursuit for the Owls would begin with the Great Gray in the Sax-Zim Bog at first light on January 29th. Clinton had advised us on the most probable bird, so that’s where we began our day. We had a plan B, C, and D if that one didn’t show, and Jason Mandich was even scoping out other sites that morning too. It turns out that when you have a pretty good plan A and a Tommy, that’s all you need. Tommy spotted his and Gordon’s Great Gray lifer from the gray woods at dawn and excitedly announced it to both of us.  It was a glorious moment; there were some very excited Arizona birders in the van–so much so that I had to remind them to keep their voices down so as not to spook it!

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In an instant, months of stress left my body because this bird is a trip maker.  I knew that if they dipped on everything else, including the other two Owls, that this bird would still create great memories for them.  With the ice officially broken, the real fun could begin, like going crazy with Great Gray photos.

Gordon TommyNot only was it thrill to watch these guys get this incredible lifer, but I also enjoyed seeing a Great Gray in a new (to me) part of the Bog. It doesn’t matter where these guys are, though.  They are just plain cool.

Great Gray Owl

After some great looks and photos, I gave the guys the option of continuing to enjoy this bird or going after the other Great Grays while the time was still prime. Perhaps it was the hat or all that face time with the Owl, but they made a wise choice and decided to hang with this one.  Turns out that it would be our only one of the trip.

Great Gray Owl Great Gray Owl

I was in full-on relaxation mode at this point, though I did have to run a tight schedule in the short term–our only window for Sharp-tailed Grouse of this four-day birding odyssey was coming to a close quickly since they are tough to find after 9:30 AM. Somehow I managed to pull them away from the Great Gray and get to the Sharp-tail lek in time.

Sharp-tailed GrouseThe guys even got to see the males of this new lifer doing their courtship dances! That was topped off by the Grouse coming roadside to feast at a local resident’s feeders before retiring for the day.  It really couldn’t have been a better experience for viewing this bird.

After the time and big bird pressures out of the way, we had the rest of the day to just cruise around the Bog in pursuit of whatever, like checking out the Pine Grosbeaks at the Visitors Center.Pine GrosbeakThis is a bird I previously had terrible photos of, so this felt good to see a male up close.

Pine GrosbeakAnd of course, there were Common Redpolls which is a lifer for the guys.  There are always Redpolls. This one had some potential for…oh, who cares anymore?

Common Redpoll

“I don’t even know who I am.”

I am a huge fan of the potential lumping of the Common/Hoary Redpolls.  My list may go down, but so will my birding stress!

At every feeding station we stopped at, Black-capped Chickadees always made their presence known…as they should, they are awesome.

Black-capped Chickadee

But there is a cooler Chickadee that lurks in the shadow of its cousin and is much more shy.  Thankfully the stunning Boreal Chickadee overcame that shyness just in time for the guys’ visit.

Boreal ChickadeeThe Boreal Chickadees had started to become a regular at the Admiral Road feeders not more than a week before the guys arrived.  Tommy and Gordon were truly spoiled with this lifer.  It appeared within a minute of us stopping at the feeders.  How many birders, myself included, have waited for an hour or more only to be skunked?  Additionally, it came out often, like every minute instead of every half hour. Like the Great Gray, this bird is not a given.  Also like the Great Gray, much face time is required with this bird.  I would estimate that we spent equal time with it as we did with the Owl.  For me this bird ranks just below a Great Gray Owl but definitely above a Snowy Owl. As such, I am on a never-ending quest to get a photo of a BOCH that I am happy with.

Boreal ChickadeeBoreal Chickadee

The first day in the Bog was as good as I could possibly hope for with the only notable miss being a Pileated Woodpecker for the guys. Otherwise, the guys cleaned house with the “good stuff” even picking up some additional lifers in the more common birds.  Here is the summary of their lifers:

Great Gray Owl – Tommy, Gordon

Sharp-tailed Grouse – Tommy, Gordon

Ruffed Grouse – Tommy, Gordon

Boreal Chickadee – Tommy, Gordon

Common Redpoll – Tommy, Gordon

Northern Shrike – Gordon

Each of the next two days would have its own Owl focus.  Could we be just as successful the next day in Duluth/Superior with the Snowy?

Once again, a huge shout-out and thank you to Clinton Nienhaus for his extensive Bog help on all kinds of birds and to Jason Mandich and Jeff Grotte for their owling advice. We couldn’t have done it without you guys.  There’s no “I” in Great Gray.

GOOD Morning Sax-Zim Bog!

After a successful hunt for a Gyrfalcon lifer and a Boreal Chickadee photo on Sunday, I was primed for a day of different birding objectives when I woke up at the in-laws’ house in the Northwoods Monday morning. I was expecting magic–I was going to the Sax-Zim Bog.  Part of that excitement was that, when given the choice between the Bog or hanging out with Grandma for the morning, Evan chose the Bog.  Based on recent knowledge I had, I knew this could be a special day of lifering and just downright fun birdwatching for him.  Doing something science-based eased the parental guilt of pulling him out of school on this day, especially since science (and other subjects) get pushed to the margins in this era of standardized testing where math and reading reign supreme.  Forget the guilt, I felt like I was doing something good.

Getting him up that morning was tough, but the promise of McDonald’s breakfast and the morning’s main objective-seeing Sharp-tailed Grouse do their courtship dance on a lek-was enough to get him going.  We left the house under an amazing starry sky (truly, there is no better place to see the night sky) to try to get to the lek around first light.  However, the breakfast errand and my negligence in not planning extra time to get all the way to Meadowlands in the southwest corner of the Bog caused a delay in my plans.  Needless to say, I was haulin’ down Co. Rd. 7.

Still, I brake for Great Gray Owls.  Coffee is a great way to start the day, but these are even better way to get the day off on the right foot.

Great Gray Owl

Note the distinct white “mustache” which is visible even in the diminished light of dawn and dusk.

I’d love to tell you how I spotted this thing, but you deserve the truth: I saw hazard lights in the dim morning light.  That usually means one thing in the Bog. Immediately I looked in the vicinity of the stopped car and saw the giant silhouette.  Brakes were slammed. A sleeping child was woken. Game on!  I was NOT expecting to see a Great Gray this trip.  They have been very sporadically seen since early January.  Many out-of-state visitors dipped on this species this winter.   Interestingly I had seen a report of a Great Gray on Co. Rd. 7 the previous evening, so I was keeping my eyes peeled.  I’d like to think I would have spotted it on my own.  But really, who cares? These things are just fun to see–well worth delaying our Sharp-tailed Grouse plans even more.

Great Gray Owl

Call me crazy, but I prefer to watch Great Gray Owls on gray overcast days and in gloomy light.  There’s just something fitting about it that adds to the mystique of this bird.

Great Gray Owl

Great Gray Owl

Despite this good fortune, I was confounded.  How much time could I devote to watching this owl?  I had to get to the lek if I wanted to see Sharp-tailed Grouse.  Why does birding always have to be so stressful and full of decisions?!  Mr. Owl, or I should say Mr. Crow helped me out.  After 15 minutes or so of owl-watching, an American Crow flew in out of nowhere right at the Great Gray.  It was awesome to watch the owl’s defense posture, spreading out his wing and ducking his head.  But he didn’t want to be bothered any more, so he departed for the deep, gray recesses of the Tamarack bog behind him.  Evan was using my camera at the time to get good looks at the owl, so I wasn’t able to capture this. I will offer up a short video for your viewing pleasure, though.

Next stop was the lek just north and east of the intersection of Co. Rd. 29 and Racek Rd. We got there around 8:15.  Birding friend Clinton Nienhaus had told me that he had observed the grouse dancing around 7:30 last week, which was 8:30 this week thanks to Daylight Savings Time.  So we were still on time.  I found the small group of eight Sharp-tailed Grouse over a quarter mile east of the white house.  They were little brown dots in a field of snow, very far from even the camera’s view. We were able to view them a little closer from Racek Rd.

Sharp-tailed GrouseAnd they were doing their courtship dances!  It was an incredible thing to watch even from a distance.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Sharp-tailed Grouse

This was a life bird for Evan.  It wasn’t even a state bird for me; I had seen a group of 12 or so about 18 years ago pecking grit off MN Hwy. 73 near Sturgeon.  So for me it was fun to see this bird as a birder and add it to my state eBird list.  Evan and I really enjoyed watching these grouse.  We sat together, him on my lap, watching the dances on the camera’s LCD out the driver’s side window.   We were quite content to just hang out and see what they’d do.  Under the weight of a freshly minted 8-year-old I was reminded of how quickly time passes and how kids don’t stay little long.  Sharing this moment with Evan and watching these birds is one I won’t forget.

The previous weekend my friend Steve Gardner saw these same Grouse on the same day Clinton saw them dancing on the lek.  However, Steve saw them at a later time in the morning as they were running around the yard of the white house where many people have been seeing them come to the bird feeders.  Piecing these two observations together, I knew that eventually the Grouse would head for the white house after their courtship dances.  Sure enough, around 8:45, the theatrics were over and protagonist and antagonist Grouse alike hung up their theatrical costumes, slapped backs like old friends, congratulated each other on another great performance, and headed to the bar…er, bird feeders.

Evan and I hopped onto Co. Rd. 29 for better views.  The lek is to the left of the garage and behind the row of pines about a quarter mile.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

It was a gray day, but we were still able to photo crush some Sharptails. ‘Sharptails’ is a throw-back term to when I hunted them long ago in Montana.  It’s just what people called them, and I have trouble letting go of that nickname for the cumbersome official name.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

I didn’t get many shots because something spooked the Grouse back to the lek area. Looking at this last picture I took, I’m guessing a raptor of some sort was cruising overhead.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Like the Great Gray, these Sharptails made it easy for us to move on to something new in the Bog.  Next stop was the Admiral Road feeding station; Evan needed a Boreal Chickadee lifer, and I wanted more photos as well as a lifer Black-backed Woodpecker that had been hanging out just south of the feeders.

By the time we got to Admiral Road, the overcast sky was gone, and it was a glorious blue-sky day.  There were a couple of cars of birders at the feeders.  We watched for the Boreal Chickadees for awhile but weren’t seeing them.  So I got out and walked the road looking and listening for the Black-backed.  An Ohio birder approached me asking what I was looking for, and I learned that he hadn’t seen the Chickadees after a half hour wait. Yikes. Maybe Evan won’t get that lifer today.  Just as we were going to give up, though, the Boreals stormed the feeders!  Mr. Ohio and Evan lifered at the same time.  Evan was about 10 feet away from the feeders and didn’t need me to point out his new bird.  So stunning in the now gorgeous light!

Time to move on again.  As much as I’d like a Black-backed Woodpecker, I was more anxious to get a Hawk Owl for the winter.  I can probably get the resident Black-backed Woodpecker in the summer.  On the way to Hellwig Creek (mile marker 29) on Hwy. 53, we bumped into a Northern Shrike and three Black-billed Magpies.  How is that you can walk up to these things in a parking lot in Colorado and club them if you choose, and yet I can never get one to stay still for a photo in northern Minnesota?

Black-billed Magpie

Evan and I were now racing the clock as we went south of the Bog toward Canyon on Hwy. 53 in search of the Hellwig Hawk Owl.  Grandma was bringing Marin southbound after a morning of tea parties, nail-paintings, etc to meet us so the kids and I could leave the area before noon to get back home in time for Evan’s piano lesson.  Hawk Owls are quite conspicuous when present, often perching on top of Spruce trees.  I just could not locate it.  Maybe it had gone north already.  Nuts! I really wanted to see this owl again. This was one of my main birding goals for the trip.

Evan and I headed north again to meet up with Grandma and Marin, only we were stopped in our tracks by a Timber Wolf crossing the road!  It stopped broadside just 30 feet from the car, but I couldn’t get the camera out in time.  Instead I got a running shot as it went down the snowmobile trail.

wolf

Sadly we discovered the wolf was injured as it carried one paw.  Evan was pretty distraught over it, wanting me to call somebody even.  I assured him, perhaps incorrectly, that the wolf would be okay. (Though it did look a bit skinny.)

wolf

After rendezvousing with Grandma and Marin at the Anchor Lake Rest Area, the kids and I were now headed south.  I would be going by mile marker 29 one last time.  It was my last hope for Hawk Owl.  I texted JG Bennett and Clinton Nienhaus to get more info on which side of the highway it had been seen.  JG shot back right away that it was the west side.  At least I now had somewhere to focus.  As we went by Hellwig Creek, I scanned every Spruce top. Nothing.  Then, there! A glob in an Aspen tree of all places was moving! It was Hellwig, the Hawk Owl!!  Do you see him?  And do you see all those perfect Spruce tops he’s NOT sitting on?

Hawk Owl

This was my first time photographing a Northern Hawk Owl with a blue sky background.  Now if only I could get the classic shot on top of a Spruce with a blue sky!

Northern Hawk Owl

This Hawk Owl didn’t care about anything, especially that I was underneath photographing him.  Didn’t bother him one bit.  In fact, he went about his business of becoming the cleanest Hawk Owl in the land.  These things remind me of cats.

First the feet.

Northern Hawk Owl

Then the pits.

Northern Hawk Owl

And then the uh, you know.

Northern Hawk Owl

Hawk Owls, like many owls, are birds of many faces and poses.

Here’s Mr. Bean.

Northern Hawk Owl

Here’s Oscar the Grouch

Northern Hawk Owl

And finally the classic look is its namesake, a bird that looks like an owl but perches like a hawk.

Northern Hawk Owl

Here’s another short video that captures some of the essence of this awesome owl.

So there you have it. Two lifers for Evan (Boreal Chickadee and Sharp-tailed Grouse), four birding objectives of mine met (lifer Gyrfalcon, photograph of Boreal Chickadee, eBird record of Sharp-tailed Grouse, and year bird Northern Hawk Owl), and sprinkle in a bonus Great Gray Owl and other cool northern birds for taste–I’d say it was a successful end-of-winter field trip up north.  And we were home around the time that Evan would have gotten done with school for the day.The northern gulls, sea ducks, and Black-backed Woodpecker will have to wait for another winter trip.  For now, though I must tie up some loose ends and prepare for a lifer-fest in Arizona in a couple weeks.

Gyr!

Just as with beer, cheese, and processed meats, occasionally one must step foot in next-door Wisconsin for the finer things in life, and birds are no exception.  Last spring their state-record Garganey just over the border drove Minnesota and Wisconsin birders wild. This winter a slightly less cool bird-which by no means diminishes its status!-showed up in the twin-port city of Superior, Wisconsin.  This large bird, figuratively and literally speaking, that chose to take up winter residence on the Wisconsin side of the Blatnik Bridge also had Minnesota birders worked up into a frenzy.  Yes, we are talking about the Gyrfalcon, a falcon so superior in size and awesomeness to its lesser brethren that seasoned northern birders drop the “falcon” altogether when uttering its name.  Gyr (pronounced “jeer”-trust me, I heard it spoken by the state’s top birder) was first caught by raptor bander, Dave Evans, in Superior and word slowly got out that this arctic predator was in town. Better yet is that it had taken up residence at the Peavey grain elevators on Connors Point where it spends much time loafing and enjoying spectacular views of Lake Superior when not feeding on pigeons in the harbor.

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I, too, had Gyr fever.  I had many false-starts and set-backs for getting up north the past month, but I finally made it happen.  It took much planning, namely sending the kids home with Grandma and Grandpa after a double birthday celebration, sending Melissa home to a quiet house, and sending myself solo to Duluth/Superior and beyond.  It was win-win-win. Though with some atrocious dog diarhhea episodes at home while 3/4 of us were away, that conclusion may have to be settled far from now by the bird-blogging historians.

But, anyhow, I felt free as a bird as I drove north, much like this Rough-legged Hawk I saw along the way.

Rough-legged Hawk

Duluth birder, JG Bennett, knew I was coming and graciously agreed to help me locate Gyr – not necessarily an easy task as many birders have dipped on seeing it.  In exchange I’ll be helping him find his Blue Grosbeak lifer this summer–I think I’m getting the better end of this deal.  JG called me when I was about an hour from Duluth to tell me that the Gyr was present.  Nice guy that he is, he babysat the thing for over an hour until I showed up. Considering the distance from the viewing area and the massive gridiron structure, I was glad he did.

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Even in this next photo you can get a sense of the size of the Gyr (look for the bump near the top right).

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At times like this I’m thankful for the zoom capabilities of my camera.  Quality leaves a lot to be desired, but, hey, no one’s getting killer shots or even great views of this raptor.

Gyrfalcon

GyrfalconSome fun history on Gyr is that this same individual was caught and banded in 2003 in the Duluth/Superior area.  At the time it was a third-year bird.  It ended up returning every winter for four years and then did not return until this year!  Given when it was banded, the age of this male Gyrfalcon is estimated to be 14 years 8 months–the oldest Gyrfalcon on record!

I spent about a half hour or so with the bird who never, ever moved off his perch, even when pigeons flew right by his head.  By seeing the main target right away, my time was then free to fritter away as I pleased.  I had northern gulls to pick up (Glaucous, Iceland, Great Black-backed), but the Duluth shipping canal was froze over, so there went any hopes for gulls or sea ducks.  Instead I decided to try to track down one of three Northern Hawk Owls in the Duluth area as it had been over a year since I had seen this cool bird. The strong winds were keeping the owls hidden though.  I couldn’t find a single one.  Duluth birds in general were giving me the snub, including this Pine Grosbeak.

Pine Grosbeak

I had one last hope for the Hawk Owl (“Northern” is a bit superfluous and is often dropped by northern birders).  One had been hanging out just south of the Sax-Zim Bog near Canyon.  Specifically this bird could be reliably found right at mile marker 29 at Hellwig Creek.  I decided that the Duluth Hawk Owls were a lost cause, so I might as well try for Hellwig and then use up my remaining daylight hours in the Bog.  Hellwig was also a no-show, so it was on to the Bog for me.

I have several unfinished birding projects of sorts for the Sax-Zim Bog–a lifer or two, better photo ops of some, officially getting another on my state eBird list, and so on. Anyhow, one of my top goals was to get a good photo of a Boreal Chickadee, so I made a bee-line to the Admiral Road feeding station.  There were the usual suspects around. Gregarious Gray Jays are always up for a photo-shoot.

Gray Jay

Common Redpolls were everywhere.  A couple looked whiter and plumper than the rest.  I’m thinking this one looks good for Hoary based on the small, conical bill and faint streaking on the flanks.  It had the overall frosty appearance of a Hoary.

Hoary Redpoll

The Boreal Chickadees can be quite finicky.  Often birders will have to wait up to a half hour or more for just a flash appearance.  That was my experience last year.  This year was a different story as two of them were coming out from the Spruce bog constantly in the last hour of daylight to feed on their favorite winter food–peanut butter smeared on branches.  Visitors to Sax-Zim are encouraged to slather up some branches with the creamy stuff (and donate their fair share of PB) at the Admiral Road feeders when they visit.  It’s crazy, but it works.

This Boreal Chickadee momentarily, and perhaps regretfully, chose suet over PB.

Boreal Chickadee

Admittedly I’m a bit smitten with this bird.  I’ve never really been able to answer the question of “What’s your favorite bird?”, but this one has to be right up there.  I may be a bit biased, but this, in my opinion, is the best Chickadee.  Perhaps that’s because it leads a secretive life in the deep, mysterious Spruce bogs alongside Great Gray Owls and Spruce Grouse and is rarely seen or perhaps because it is so visually stunning.

Boreal Chickadee

I’m finally at peace with the Boreal Chickadee as I got the photo I wanted–even if it does have a little peanut butter in it.

Boreal Chickadee

After hanging out with the Boreal Chickadees, who, by the way, are just as tame as their Black-capped cousins, I headed to Grandma and Grandpa’s to spend the night with the kids and prepare for the next day of birding which is arguably the best day I’ve ever had in the Sax-Zim Bog.  Stay tuned…there will be videos!

2014’s Last Big Gift

By all rights I should have written a post commemorating the incredible birding year of 2014 by doing a Top Ten birds post or something similar. It sounds corny, but this year has been unimaginable and would be deserving of such cliche.  Evan and I ended with 72 and 96 life birds respectively.  Highlights included tallying eight new species of ducks and seeing 30 individual owls of 8 different species.  Additionally I found three official county records and a host of other rare birds for the county, not to mention the many rare birds we’ve seen found by others.  2014 was a year of gifts, and in a fitting fashion, there was one last gift that would usurp any year-end reflective post.

We recently made our usual Christmastime trek to the northwoods to spend some time with Melissa’s family.  My family is already in Arizona for the season.  As is the custom, we pass through the Sax-Zim Bog on the way home. After our Great Gray Owl success over Thanksgiving and after having my Facebook feed littered with GGOW pictures all December, I figured seeing the owls again was a lock. Nope. We were there the wrong time of day (mid-morning), and the sun was out. With the gloomy weather the past month the owls could be found actively hunting all day long.  Apparently they are now less photogenic and are being found late in the afternoon and early in the morning.

My hopes for the trip were not over though as I decided to take the next morning to head down to Duluth to look for a Townsend’s Solitaire and a Northern Hawk Owl.  I struck out on both but still held up hopes for good stuff when coming back north through the Bog. Again, the GGOWs were playing hide-and-seek, where they were doing a lot more hiding than seeking.  I had some other goals for the Bog, which included seeing/photographing the resident Boreal Chickadees as well as getting a lifer Black-backed Woodpecker that had been pretty regular.  Well, the chickadees were a no-show, and I missed the woodpecker by 5 min. This was turning out to be a bleak trip up north as far as birds go.

Gray Jay

The next day, though, I received a birding gift that surpassed anything I was searching for. It was perfect – so much so that I hadn’t even thought to put it on my Christmas list.  That morning while returning from taking care of my dogs who were staying at my parents’ house, I stumbled upon a lone, male Spruce Grouse pecking grit off the side of the road along a black spruce bog.  I was ecstatic.  The last time I saw one was about 15 years ago, long before I was a birder, and it was only the third one I’d ever seen.

Spruce Grouse

Spruce Grouse

Surprisingly the SPGR was somewhat wary of me despite their nickname of “Fool Hen.” It flew from spruce bough to spruce bough allowing me some good looks and photographs before disappearing into the dense spruce bog.  I was hoping to have it stick around for Evan’s sake since he was just a few miles away.

Spruce Grouse

They are incredibly beautiful birds and quite the prize bird in Minnesota.  It was quite a thrill to see the intricate and bold patterns of this grouse species.  It very well may be one of my favorite sightings of 2014 even though it was not a life bird.

Later that day we headed to Melissa’s Grandma’s house for some coffee and a game of Farkle and some birds.  The drive over was eventful as a half dozen escaped horses were all over the road.  We stopped at the farm house to let the owner know and were delighted to see he was home and that he had an Ermine running around his yard, all decked out in it’s sporting white winter coat.  We didn’t just stop for horses and weasels, though. There were, of course, Pine Grosbeaks.

Pine Grosbeak

Though this PIGR appears legless and taxidermied with a stick poking into its mannequin body, I can assure you it is real and my best photo yet of this species.

The birds and treats at Grandma’s did not disappoint as Grandma puts out a spread nary a grandkid or Evening Grosbeak can resist.  Though this species was once very common in the northland, its population has declined dramatically and has become quite  the prize bird, visiting only select feeders.  Grandma Evelyn’s is just such a place.  Many breaks were taken from the intense Farkle game to look at these beauties.

Evening Grosbeak

Evening Grosbeak

I love the color variation of all sides of this bird.  It was a special treat to be able to photograph them on a perfectly sunny day.

Evening Grosbeak

Evening GrosbeakWith cravings for goodies and grosbeaks satisfied, it was hard to complain about getting whooped by Grandma in Farkle.  We left with full bellies and content hearts, satisfied yet already yearning for the next visit.  It was a great day in the northwoods with its birds and people!

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

Great Gray Owls – Served up Family Style in the Sax-Zim Bog

‘Tis the season when we load up the vehicle with kids and dogs and gear to make the long trek up north for Thanksgiving.  Or, this year it was load up the van, have the van die in the garage because of a failed alternator, unload the said van, and re-load the contents into the much smaller SUV and hit the road with minimal disruption to the planned schedule.  Such an ordeal is stressful enough, but to the birder who knows the Sax-Zim Bog is en route and who knows that many owls have been seen there recently, it was especially stressful.  I was hoping to pass through the Bog before we got to Mom and Dad’s who live just 40 minutes north of the Bog, but the vehicle dilemma was putting all of this in doubt.  It turns out that I was able to get us reconfigured or crammed, rather, into the new mode of transportation, and we were only delayed by an hour.

I hadn’t mentioned to Melissa that I wanted to pass through the Bog which seriously only adds about 5 miles to our trip.  Notice I did not mention how much time it can add. 🙂 Anyhow, as we were driving into the north country Melissa read my mind and said, “I suppose you want to bomb through the Bog on the way home.”  Isn’t she great? I didn’t even have to ask.

So that’s what we did.  Heading down Arkola Road from Cotton we had some nice birds to see right away on the road as we flushed a small flock of Pine Grosbeaks and some Common Redpolls. But we were not here for the piddly stuff and were instead here for the big game of birding, Great Gray Owls.  Birders had been seeing them out on the roads much more regularly now with the winter weather upon us.  From what I’ve gathered, I suspect that a family of resident Great Grays had been frequenting a couple roads quite regularly.

Regular or not, I wasn’t taking chances as I had my secret weapon along — Melissa is our chief owl spotter.  She found all five Great Grays in Aitkin last December, and she found most of our Burrowing Owls in Arizona last March.  She’s good, and I was happy to have her along to help.  Plus I think she likes the thrill of the hunt.

As we cruised along the spruce-lined, gravel road at 5 MPH straining to pick out one of these well-camouflaged birds, an enormous bird flushed from the spruce trees on my left and flew a short distance before disappearing into the dark swamp forever.  The view was brief but undeniable – Great Gray Owl!  It was a thrill, but a cheap one.  We were also after good looks at these amazing creatures.  I stopped the vehicle where he went into the woods and looked, but it was useless as you couldn’t see into the thick spruce bog.

Oh well. We kept on cruising.  Then all of the sudden I saw another Great Gray Owl flying low above the ditch on the right side going straight away from us! Then it crossed the road and set up in the trees on the left side of the road, but we didn’t see exactly where it perched.  This stand of trees was thinner, and I knew we would eventually spot it. “There it is!” shouted COS.

Great Gray Owl

Everybody, including the two dogs, were excited.  As we were making exclamations in the car, Chance couldn’t handle it and tried to come up and over the rear seat which caused Marin to scream.  I immediately threw the car in reverse and got far away from the owl so I could solve this unexpected by-product of an owl-spotting without spooking the owl that caused the spotting.  Once everybody and every dog was calm and its place, the owl-enjoyment began again.

My experience with Great Grays is that they really don’t care about you.  They’re going to do what they need to do whether they are being watched or not.  This owl was constantly moving around and looking for places from which to hunt meadow voles.

Great Gray Owl

Great Grays have incredible hearing and can hear the voles running under the snow. We saw this one go down a couple of times.  It wasn’t successful.  Given that this owl did appear on the small side and that it wasn’t a skilled hunter, I’m guessing it was a young bird.

Great Gray Owl

He never stopped trying, though.  Every time it flew, we remarked how spookily and silently they move.  At one point it flew right toward us and just to the side of the car before finding this new perch.

Great Gray Owl

Great Gray Owl

Great Gray Owl

I never get tired of seeing Great Gray Owls.  They are incredibly cool and mysterious. Even Melissa was enthralled with this bird.  We continued to enjoy it until it eventually went out of sight.

Great Gray Owl

Two Great Grays, I couldn’t believe it.  That’s the best I’ve done in the Bog.  Nevertheless, they are addicting and we couldn’t stop, especially since some birders had seen 4 or 5 the day before. We had just enough time to check one more road.  We drove down the road fast so that we could turn around and have the quickly setting sun at our backs.  This time we drove slow.  COS was straining to look ahead.  I think she was hooked on the thrill of the hunt.  And then COS did it again as she pointed straight-ahead and said, “Josh!”  Do you see what COS saw?

Great Gray Owl

These things blend in like you wouldn’t believe, something that COS said was amazing considering how big they are.  And this one was big, really big.

Great Gray Owl

Great Gray Owl

Great Gray Owl

It’s always awesome to see a single Great Gray, but seeing three of them was tops. Five Great Grays in Aitkin, eight Burrowing Owls in Arizona, and now three Great Grays in the Sax-Zim Bog – this family has had some incredible owl-prowls together.

I’d like to leave you with a short clip of this Great Gray.  In the future I hope to do more video of this species because they are fascinating to watch.