Three-toed Woodpecker

 The three-toed woodpecker are found in the boreal forests of North America, Europe and Asia. At one time they were considered one species but in 2003 the species was split into the American three-toed and Eurasian three-toad. The three-toed woodpecker breeds farther north then any other species of woodpecker. The American version is found through out Canada, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. Typically they stay on their territory year round foraging for the larva of bark and wood boring beetles. Unlike most other species of woodpeckers they find their prey by pealing the bark off of trees instead of boring holes into them.

The three-toed woodpecker gets its name because it is one of the only woodpecker species that has three toes on each foot instead of four. Other then the two varieties of three-toed only the black-backed woodpecker has three toes. The black-backed are also found in boreal forests, although they do not breed quite as far north. The black-backed is very similar in appearance to three-toed except as its name would suggest it has a black back where the three-toed woodpecker's back is mottled black and white. The top photo in the post is a three-toed where the second is a black back. As you can see they look very similar. These are both males which you can tell by the yellow crown on the top of their heads. The female three-toed woodpecker has a mottled black and white crown where the top of the female black-back's head is all black.

A Day in the Sax Zim Bog

For the past month I have been tyring to get back up to the Sax Zim Bog area to take some pics. I usually try and get up there a couple of times each winter because it is one of the best places around to see some of the species that usually live up in the boreal forests of Canada. I made my first trip up in January for the Brrrrdathon but because of weather and schedule I was not able to make it back up until last week. Since I had a vacation day that I had to burn I decided to take off last Thursday and head north.The weather on Thursday turned out to be quite nice. Except for some clouds around noon, the skies were pretty clear with temps up into the 20s. My first stop when I arrived was to the feeding station on Admiral Ave. I have always found this to be a great location for finding many of the wintering passerines. On this trip the feeders were dominated number wise by common redpoll. When I was up in January the only place that I found redpolls was at some of the feeders in the Meadowlands but on this trip they seemed to be everywhere. A couple of rare hoary redpolls have also been reported but I did not see any redpoll that appeared like it might be a hoary.

In contrast to the redpoll numbers were the numbers of pine grosbeak. In January there were large numbers of pine grosbeak around the bog. You could find a half dozen or more at almost any feeder in the bog. On this trip however I only spotted a couple females at the Admiral feeder and no other pine grosbeak anywhere else.

There were still a couple of boreal chickadees hanging around the Admiral feeder. They would come in and feed for a little bit and then disappear back into the bog. Forty five minutes to an hour later they would fly back in to the feeders, eat and then disappear again. While I was there I pointed them out to several other people who were looking for them because they were a life bird.

There were also a lot of gray jays at both the Admiral feeders and the feeding station on Arkola. Gray jays are very clever birds and not very afraid of people. On a couple of occasions I was afraid that one of them would fly though my open car window at Arkola.
After the two and a half hour drive and spending a couple hours in the car at the feeders I decided it would be good to get out and stretch my legs. So I put on my boots and headed off in to the woods off of McDavitt Road. This is usually a good place to find black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers. As I walked into the woods I could see signs that there were woodpeckers in the area. Black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers typically peel the bark off of the trees instead of boring holes in the wood like most other woodpeckers do. So I listened for their distinctive peeling sound and found a male bird at work deep in the woods.

It was a lot of work walking through the deep woods and thigh high snow to get the woodpecker pics so I decided to walk along a path for a while. This was fortunate because a little ways down the path I came across a northern hawk owl. Northern hawk owls are one of the few owls that are most active during the day, diurnal. The owl was perched over an area that had recently been used for logging and was probably hunting rodents that lived in the remaining wood piles. Later on I looked for great gray owls in the same area, I saw two on McDavitt in January, but on this trip I did not have any luck with great grays. This might have been because I did not want to stick around too late since I still had a two and a half hour drive to get home.

1st Annual Brrrrdathon

Last weekend I headed up north for the first annual Brrrrdathon. This event was sponsored by the newly created organization The Friends of Sax Zim, formerly Bird Nation, to raise money for an eventual visitors center in the Sax Zim Bog. Like any outdoor event held in Minnesota in January weather played a major role. Shortly after I arrived in Duluth on Friday the snow began to fall, which made photographing wildlife, not to mention driving, very difficult.

As I sat in my hotel room Friday night I was worried that the trip would be a waste of time due to the weather but when I woke up Saturday morning the skies where clear and blue. After digging my car out of the snow I headed out slowly to the bog. The city plows were already out working but the road conditions were still not very good, especially when I got to the back roads in the bog.

Despite my concern over the roads I was excited about the number of birds that I spotted as I travelled to the bog. The end of the storm seemed to bring the birds to life and many of them fluttered from tree to tree looking for food. As I entered the bog area a bald eagle soared from his perch to greet me.

The first place in the bog that I headed to was a feeding station that had been set up on Admiral Ave. Admiral had not been plowed at all but I was able to make it through travelling down the tracks of others who had already made their way down the road. A feeding station has been set up in this location for years and it has always been good for attracting northern species including boreal chickadees. When I arrived at the feeder there was already a pair of boreal chickadees there as well as black-capped chickadees, pine grosbeaks, red-breasted nuthatch, and downy and hairy woodpeckers.

After shooting at the Admiral feeder for about an hour I headed over to McDavitt RD, which is another location that many of the northern species have been seen. About half way down McDavitt I found a path in the snow that went back to a small feeding station that was located in the woods. I decided that I could use a little exercise so I through on my winter gear and headed out down the path. It did not take long before I located a pair of black-backed woodpeckers. I was excited because black-back and three-toed woodpecker sightings have not been as common this year as they have in the past. Unfortunately to get the angle I needed to get decent shots of the bird I did have to wade through waist deep snow. It was worth it though, don't you think?

The main attraction at Sax Zim are the northern owls. The Sax Zim Bog is a mix of state, county and private lands, which includes the Cloquet Valley State Forest, Whiteface River State Forest and the Sax and Zim Wildlife Management Areas. The habitat consists mainly of conifer bog, spruce, tamarack and white cedar. This particular habitat is very attractive to northern owls that come down from Canada in the winter in search of food. The most common type of owl seen during the winter is the northern hawk owl. I found this northern hawk owl perched in a tree not far off of Mcdavitt. Since northern hawk owls are mostly diurnal, active during the day, they are one of the easiest owl to photograph.

As the sun went down on Saturday night many birders began their search for the most prized bird in the bog, the great grey owl. Great grey owls have not been seen with any regularity in the bog since 2005, when there was an irruption of thousands of birds which came down from Canada. This season there have been more sightings then in the past few years but it still seems to be hit and miss. The fact that they are crepuscular, hunt at dusk and dawn, also does not help, especially if you are looking for pictures. Fortunately around 4:30pm I found some people who had spotted a pair of these owls on McDavitt Road. I got a few pictures in the low light and then just watched them hunt until the sun went down.

Camera Critters: Black-Backed Woodpecker

During the winter one of the most common type of birds that we see around are woodpeckers. One main reason that woodpeckers do not usually migrate may be because their food source is not as affected by the winter, due to the fact that it lives insulated inside of trees.

One of the more rare woodpeckers that can be found in Minnesota, at least in the northeast portion of the state, is the black-backed woodpecker.

Unlike many other types of woodpeckers that bore into dead trees in search of prey, like hairy, downy, red-bellied and others, the black backed woodpecker will actually strip the outside layers of bark off of the tree in search of the larvae of bark and wood-boring beetles.

Even though these woodpeckers do not typically migrate during the winter from time to time we get an irruption of birds that travel south out of their typical range. This may be due to less prey available in the range or an overpopulation of woodpeckers.

These pictures where taken in the Sax Zim Bog area on January 10th.

Sax Zim Winter Birding Festival Woodpeckers

This past weekend I headed up to Meadowlands, MN for the Sax Zim Winter Birding Festival. I was pretty excited because the Sax Zim Bog, in North East Minnesota, is well known, by many birders, for its rare winter migrants. This was the first year of the festival, which was organized by Mike Hendrickson, and it was a huge success. There were over 150 people who registered for the convention from 19 different states, which was twice the number that the organizers expected for the inaugural year. Mike, who I birded with at the Duluth and Two Harbors CBC and is a great bird guild if you ever need someone to take you around northeast Minnesota, did a great job planning and organizing the festival.

The main targets, for many of the birders who venture up to the Sax Zim area, are the winter owl species. I have made quite a few trips up there, over the years, searching for great grey, northern hawk, and boreal owls. Most years there are a few resident owls to find but every 4 or 5 years there is an irruption/invasion and the numbers go up. The best known example of an owl irruption/invasion was in 2004/2005 when over 5000 great gray owls were counted in the state as well as significant numbers of northern hawk and boreal owls. Even when there is not an owl irruption/invasion there are other unique species of birds. This year was not a great owl or winter finch year but it was a very good year for woodpeckers. I have read a lot of reports, on the list servers, about people spotting black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers and I have even made several trips to the Duluth and Two Harbors area to try and get some pics but so far I had not had any luck. All that I had been able to find were downy and hairy woodpeckers.
So I left early Friday morning and pulled into the Sax Zim area around 9am. The skies where clear and blue, which in Minnesota during the winter time usually means that it is pretty cold. Since the festival registration did not begin until 4pm I had about 7 hours to do some birding on my own. So I went and checked out the feeding stations that some of the local residents had set up in order to encourage birds, and thus birders, to visit. Then I headed off to the bog to check out some of the better birding spots that I have found in past years. I took a lot of pictures of many cool birds but the only woodpeckers that I found were downies or hairies.
I was not worried though because I still had a couple of days of birding left and there were still quite a few sightings in the area. The next morning I was on a bus with about 30 people touring the bog in search of cool birds. That morning I got quite a few more pictures but I still had not seen a black-backed or three-toed. In the afternoon our group leaders decided to head out to the Hedbom Logging Road after talking with Kim Eckert who had lead a trip there in the morning and had spotted both types of woodpeckers. When we got out to Hedbom we got off the bus and followed a trail through the snow into the woods, I was really glad that I had decided to change into my Sorels. We went back a little ways looking for trees that had been stripped of their bark. This is the best sign that there are black-backed or three-toed woodpeckers around. After a few minutes we spotted a female black-backed wood pecker in the trees.

I took a couple of pics and then was heartbroken when I found that my CF card was full. I had shot through my whole 8gb card between Friday and Saturday. I deleted a couple of files that I decided that I could do with out so that I could get a couple more pics. When we got back to the bus I exchanged cards and put my spares in my pocket so that I would be ready the next time we saw a woodpecker but it was getting late and so we headed back to the community center for dinner. I decided to turn in early that night because I needed to get up early for my field trip the next morning and my hotel was 45 minutes away. The field trip on Sunday we had even better luck finding northern woodpeckers. First we found this female black back down the road from the main feeding station in the meadowlands. She was really close to the road and did not seem to care that we were there.

The black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers peel the bark off of the trees looking for insects which are good yummy protein. In the picture above you can see her tongue darting under the bark to collect her prey. I was happy because I got to add the black-backed woodpecker to my list but I was still hoping to see a three-toed also. After leaving Blue Spruce Road our filed trip moved back into the bog and our leaders decided to drive down Admiral Road. Mike, and several other residents, had hung suet feeders and parts of deer carcasses on some of the trees along Admiral. There were also quite a few trees that had their bark peeled lining the road. We stopped the bus near a group of these peeled trees and it did not take very long for our guides to locate a male three-toed woodpecker.

It took a while but I finally got both the clouds and woodpecker to cooperate and got a nice pic in descent light. I was very happy because in the 3 days of the festival I saw both of the northern woodpeckers that had eluded me. I also photographed quite a few other birds, 18gb worth, but instead of one really really long post I am going to break it up into a few smaller ones. So if you want to see more from the Sax Zim Winter Birding Festival, including redpolls, grosbeak, jays, chickadees, eagles, owls and more, then come back and visit again during the next few days.