Watery Wednesday: Park Point 10-08

Each year I try and spend some time up around Lake Superior during the fall and early winter. There is usually a lot to look at around this time of the year, fall colors, migrating raptors and warblers and usually some interesting birds out on the lake. Some of these waterfowl are just stopping to rest and feed on their way south while others will be spending their winter here.

As the edges of the lake begin to freeze many birders up around Duluth spend a good deal of time scanning the large groups of gulls that winter there, looking for some of the more rare visitors. Herring and ring-billed gulls, like the one above, make up the bulk of the wintering gulls but if you are lucking you might find a Bonaparte's, Franklin's, Thayer's or something even more rare mixed in.

You might spot a double-crested cormorant on one of those warm fall days in late September but it is most likely just stopping by on its way south, or it has spent the summer there and has not yet left. Cormorants spend the winter in coastal waters, mainly in the south.

Common mergansers are pretty common on much of the open water in Minnesota during the winter. They might stay up on Lake Superior near where the ice forms around the shore or they might move south to the parts of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers that do not freeze up during the winter.

Watery Wednesday: Prescott Waterfowl

As the temps begins to get warmer and winter loosens its grip where I live I am beginning to get excited about the upcoming spring migration. I know that it will still be a while before many of the song birds migrate back through but it may be only a matter of several weeks, as soon as some of the ice on the lakes and river melt, before we start to see migrating waterfowl, although it has really not been very long since I last saw many of these birds, usually they are the last to migrate and the first ones back

There were quite a few interesting gulls that were hanging around Black Dog Lake and Prescott, WI back in December. Unfortunately those that were more exciting, or at least more rare in Minnesota, were never in a good spot for me to photograph. I did however get this pretty good shot of a ring-billed gull as he flew past.

Redhead ducks typically stand out and are easy to identify with their bright red head, however when their are also canvas back ducks around you need to look a little closer.

The canvas back has a thinner, more pointed bill then the red head duck. It also has a bright red eye where the red heads eye is more of an orange color.

Common goldeneye often spend the entire winter in the area as long as there is some open water. This is an immature bird. You can this by how gray he is and by the fact that his eyes are not yet the bright golden color of the adults.

Trumpeter swans are another bird that will stick around as long as there is open water. Once on the verge of extinction these beautiful birds are pretty easy to find in this area year round.

My World: Colvill Park

One of my favorite places to go take pictures during the winter time is a little city park in Redwing, MN named Colvill Park.

During the summer Colvill Park is your typical city park, with playgrounds for the kids, a swimming pool, picnic tables and a small boat marina, but in the winter Colvill becomes home to numerous bald eagles.

Minnesota has a large population of eagles, second only to Alaska in the US. During the warmer months the eagles are spread out through out the state, usually around our numerous lakes and rivers, but in the winter time they all gather around the few spots where the water stays open, plus many of the eagles that live in central Canada also migrate down into this area in search of food during the winter.

Colvill Park is one of these locations. Just up river from the park is a Excel Energy steam power plant. This plant put warm water back into the river which keeps the water around Colvill from freezing up.

The eagles need the open water to find food. Fish is one of the main food sources for bald eagles in the wild. However eagles are opportunistic feeders and will eat whatever takes the least amount of energy to obtain, which makes carrion a top choice. Many of the eagles in the area are immature birds that many non-birders often mistake for golden eagles. Bald eagles do not get the white head and tail until they are around five years. We do get golden eagles that winter in the Mississippi River Valley in southern Minnesota but they are usually further away from the river, eating squirrels and turkeys instead of fish, and would not have white feathers mixed in to their wings and bodies, except 1st year golden eagles will have a white crescent on the ends of their wings, like many of the bald eagles do.

Last year the Minnesota DNR dropped a couple of dear carcasses out on one of the peninsulas for the eagles to eat. These were road kill dear and it was much better to move them where the eagles could eat them safely then leave them near the road where they might attract eagles and lead to a collision with a vehicle.

Colvill is also the place where The Raptor Center will release recuperated eagles at during the winter. During the summer we try and release them as close to where they are rescued from as possible but during the winter they need to be released where food is available so they get released at Colvill. This pic is of me releasing the eagle that I rescued and was taken by my wife Michelle. The person that is directly behind the eagle taking a photo is John Mikes who runs the blog Weekend Shooter, check out John's blog he has some great pics from Colvill that he just posted.

There are other things at Colvill to photograph other then eagles. There are usually plenty of ducks and geese around, these include Canada geese, mallards, common mergansers, common goldeneye and occasionally something different like the redhead duck pictured above.

Sometimes there are other types of waterfowl like swans, pelicans, or gulls, like this ring-billed gull who is picking at a fish. But when you mention Colvill Park most people who know about it associate it with the eagles.

Birding Colville Park

Last weekend I also made a stop down at Colville Park in Red Wing, MN. There were still quite a few eagles around but they were all perched pretty far away. I did find a group of redhead ducks. This was the first redheads that I have seen since they closed the road at Vadnais Lake late last fall.
There were also some mallards, which are quite common and a ring-billed gull who was nibbling at what looked to be a winter kill fish on the shoreline.

Duluth trip part 2: Park Point

After I left Wisconsin Point last Thursday I moved on to Park Point. At park point there were a lot of Canadian geese, mallards, and dark eyed junco. In the sports fields I spotted about 10 American golden-plover scavenging through the grass.
Next I went down to the beach at Minnesota point but the only thing that I saw was a ringed-billed gull.

On my way back out I stopped at the marsh to check out some ducks that I saw near shore. They were only mallards but while I was out I spotted a few dragon flies.Like this variegated meadowhawk that landed on some drift wood.This pair of ruby meadowhawks were mating. Hopefully they were not to late.This pair was not mating but the male still had a hold of the females head.

This was on October 25th in Duluth, MN, which is not that far from the Canadian border. When I was a kid, growing up in the Twin Cities, I remember often having snow on the ground when I went trick or treating on Halloween. Now here it is less then a week before Halloween with temps in Duluth in the 60s. More proof that global warming is a serious issue.

A gray day at Afton State Park

The weather has been pretty poor lately. The rain and clouds came into town on Sunday the 7th and remained for most of the next week. On Thursday October 11th the rain had stopped but the skies were still pretty overcast. I had planned to drive up to Duluth that afternoon after work and spend that evening and most of Friday, I had taken Friday off of work, birding the North Shore and Hawk Ridge. However since the weather was so poor I decided to change my plans. I decided to stay home, go to work on Friday, and try to make a trip up north later on, when I would have better weather for photographing birds.

It had been several days since I had been birding so I decided that I would go out despite the overcast skies. I decided to go visit Afton State Park, I had not been there since I participated in a St Paul Audubon field trip in the early summer. By the time I got off of work there were a few peaks of sun so I was hopeful that I might get some productive shots.

As I entered the park I spotted a red-tailed hawk flying overhead. Unfortunately there are no parking spots at that part of the road and since there was other traffic I was not able to pull over and get any shots of the hawk. So I continued on to the parking area and headed down the hiking trail towards the river. Along the trail I spotted quite a few sparrows, warblers, robins, chickadees, and other small birds, however between the clouds and the trees there was not enough light to get any descent shots. When I got down to a picnic area that was a little more open, down near the river, I noticed a few birds fluttering around in the small trees. I decided to play the waiting game and found a good place where I could observe the birds and wait for them to get more comfortable with my presence so that they would come out into the open and I could take some pics. A little patience paid off and I got a few shots of both ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets.

Unfortunately the ruby-crowned kinglets were not showing me their crowns.You can tell by most of the pictures that the weather was pretty gray out.
I did get a nice peak of sun every now and again and I was quick to take advantage.
Because the light did not last very long.Down on the beach I spotted a few ring-billed gulls flying over the river. One dove in after a fish while this one decided to take a rest on one of the swimming buoys. After too short a time the sky got darker so I decided it was time to take off. On my way out I spotted a group of wild turkeys foraging on the side of the road. Since there were not any cars on the road at that time I pulled over and took some pictures.A little further down the road I spotted the red-tailed hawk that I had seen when I arrived. He was sitting in a tree not far from the road with a beautiful gray sky as a background (sarcasm alert). I stopped again anyway and took a few shots and then headed off to home and dinner.

Lake Superior boat trip

On Saturday Michelle and I took a birding trip on Lake Superior organized by Mike Hendrickson. We drove up to Duluth on Friday evening, after work, and stayed in a motel in Superior, WI. We were up early Saturday morning and over to Duluth in time to take a short trip around Park Point before getting on the boat. The main purpose of the trip was to try and find jaegers. There had been reports of all 3 types of jaegers having been spotted earlier in the week so we were all hopeful. As we left Duluth harbor on the L.L. Smith Jr. research vessel we were already spotting gulls and double-crested cormorants in the harbor waters.

From his experience on his past trips and info from other local birders Mike decided to take us along the southern coast and follow Park Point to the east. After a bit of chumming the water we soon had a few gulls around the boat. Most of the gulls that we saw were herring gulls
or ring-billed gullsSoon we found that we had a couple of bonaparte's gulls mixed in also. They were easy to spot because of their much smaller size.Soon we came to the Minnesota / Wisconsin border. The border marker walls where filled with gulls but also had a few shore birds like this ruddy turnstone.

Suddenly the gulls that where following the boats seemed to get nervous and even more noisy then they already were. That is when we spotted an eagle traveling fairly low over the lake.
After the eagle flew past the flock of gulls got back to feeding and that was when Mike spotted an incoming lesser black-backed gull flying in to join the party.So the trip was going well. We had spotted 4 different gull types, cormorant, white pelican, several different types of shore birds and even had a nice eagle fly by but we still had not found any jagers. Then Mike got a call from some Wisconsin birders who had spotted a couple parasitic jaegers further to the east of our position. So we headed off to the east into Wisconsin waters and it was not long before we spotted an adult parasitic jaeger. Unfortunately he was to far away to get any sort of picture. I was disappointed but then Mike received another call, from the bird watchers who were on the beach in front of us, that there was a juvenile parasitic in the water between us and them. After a few minutes of searching the waters we located the bird and started to slowly sail towards it. It took off before we got too close but I did get a picture as it began to fly away.It flew to the west and began harassing a herring gull trying to steal some food.The boat trip was a good time. We did not get to see all 3 types of jaegers but the weather was gorgeous and I had some good opportunities to get some great shots. Mike has one more boat trip going on October 6th. As of the time I posted this there were still a few spots open so if you are interested you can get more info at Mike's site http://webpages.charter.net/mmhendrickson/.

Birding Duluth

On our way up to do some bear watching at the Vince Shute Bear Sanctuary we had a bit of time to kill. We left early in the morning and planned to stop and eat lunch in Duluth, MN. We arrived in Duluth at around noon but we had planned to eat lunch at around 2:00pm. This gave us a couple hours to do some birding in Duluth. The weather was perfect with no clouds in the sky that is until we got to Duluth. Duluth was completely fogged in. We decided that going to Hawk Ridge to watch for raptors probably would not work well in the fog so we decided to try Park Point instead. First we went down to the beach and walked along the shoreline. There were a few people on the beach, playing with dogs or doing some body surfing, so there were not that many birds. We did spot a ring-billed gull and got a couple picks. Further on down the beach we spotted a group of sanderling running in the waves, their stiff legs pumping up and down like little wind up toys.

After walking for a while we went back to the car and decided to continue down to the end of the point. On our ride around the point we saw mallard ducks, canadian geese, gulls, savannah sparrow and a couple of wimbrel scavenging on the soccer field.