Warblers from Old Cedar Ave Bridge

Yesterday we left our hotel after breakfast, around 7am, and got into the park around 8:30am. We did not get back to our new hotel until after 8pm. It was a very full and productive day with great weather, black bear cubs, bison cubs, elk, grizzly, big horned sheep, American kestrel and a lot more. The weather is supposed to turn rainy later in the week so I am spending as much time as possible outside shooting as I can while the weather is nice. So hopefully I can put together a few more Yellowstone pics for you a bit later in the week but for now how about some swallows and warblers that I shot at the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge on May 11th.

barn swallow
Nashville warbler
black and white warbler

black-throated green warbler

I promise that I will have plenty of pics and posts from Yellowstone later in the week and when I get back home.

Birding Bass Ponds

It was not all just warblers that I photographed on my trip to the Bass Ponds.
There are probably more blue-winged teal in the area right now then any other type of duck. It seems as though there are even more teal then there are mallards, which is very unusual since we have a healthy mallard population all year long.
There are still some hoodies around but they will probably all move north soon.
Herons are a bird that we see often during the spring, summer, and fall. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes but we also have about twice as many ponds and each one typically has one or two great blue heron or great egret fishing in it.
I have been having some fun lately shooting female redwing black birds. Even though they are much more drab looking then the males I enjoy shooting them more. That is probably because it is more of a challenge. The females are more secretive and do not usually hang out in the open like the males do.
Another type of bird that I see a lot of but have a difficult time photographing are swallows. Usually they are darting through the air chasing bugs around. They are so fast and maneuver so quickly that the autofocus can not home in on them. Of course the AF on my 100 - 400 never really works for small birds or insects so most of the photos that I take I use manual focus. Fortunately for me this tree swallow decided to perch and let me take his pic.

Overcast vistit to Wood Lake

Yesterday the rain stopped for a bit. The sky was still over cast and the light was not very good for shooting but I wanted to get out any way. So after work I went to Wood Lake Nature Center. All of the rain that we have received lately had flooded most of the low lying areas of the park so that it reminded me of a lot of the places that I have birded in south Florida. With very little light it was hard to ID birds let alone take pictures. I did find a green heron at a secluded pool but with the over growth blocking out what little light there was the pictures just did not turn out. Later I did find a great blue heron and got a couple of pics through the reeds. The paths were filled with little toads who had come to the high ground fleeing all the water that had flooded their normal habitat.A few monarch where floating around checking out the flowers. The board walk that crosses the water was filled with barn swallows perching on the railing cables.Most the time they would fly away as you approached but a few sat there and let me get close.

Spring migration bird walks at Wood Lake Nature Center

Spring is a great time here in Minnesota. After several months of cold and snow and gray cloudy days, it is great to see things come back to life. It is also a fun time for birding, with a lot of migrants coming through. For the past couple weeks I have spent my Thursday evenings at Wood Lake Nature Center, attending their spring migration bird walks. This has been a lot of fun. Having started birding and photography some time ago I am usually pretty good at finding subjects on my own, but sometimes it is fun to share the experience with a group of people. While I was waiting for the walk to start I noticed this cardinal at the feeders by the visitor center. As I walked over he decided to move to a safer perch but he was obviously used to humans. Cardinals are pretty common in this area.

There were also quite a few barn swallows buzzing around the visitors center also. They have been building nests on the buildings. I think this pair was trying to get the 10 day weather forecast.On the May 3rd walk the naturalist mentioned that the Baltimore Orioles had been spotted migrating through and with in minutes we spotted a couple. They were in pretty dense foliage in the trees so the picture was not as clear as I would have liked it. Another new migrant that we saw on the may 3rd walk were some green heron. Unfortunately they were flying through a forested part of the park and I was not able to get a picture. On both walks that I have participated in we have seen a lot of the common marsh birds, such as mallard, canadian geese, wood ducks, common grackle, and red-winged blackbirds.

This female wood duck had a great reflection.

This blackbird was puffed up as he sang. Their song is a warning to other males to stay away from their territory. Can you imagine how much better the world would be if people settled their disputes this way? Instead of sending soldiers to Iraq we could send the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or maybe Pearl Jam, just not Janet Jackson, we wouldn't want to start an international incident.
On the April 26th walk we were pretty excited to see a yellow-headed blackbird. These are not very common in our area since we are on the very edge of their range. I have photographed yellow-heads before but this was the first one that I have seen in Minnesota.

We were also excited that week to catch a glimpse of a red fox. He caught a glimpse of us first though, and I don't think he was too excited about seeing 15 birders wondering around. The naturalist showed us a possible fox den, from a distance, and told us that it was about time for the pups to be born. I will be checking back and try to get a shot of the pups.

All in all these walks were a lot of fun. There is still at least 1 walk left on May 10th. The walks cost $5 and begins at 6:00pm. For more information check out their web site http://www.woodlakenaturecenter.org/

Fun at Crex Meadows

Sunday we went up to Crex Meadows in Wisconsin. The weather was very nice with mostly sunny skies. Crex is about an hour to an hour and a half northeast of the Twin Cities, just across the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. This is the earliest that we have made the trip up and it was not quite as green as it was here in the Twin Cities. The water levels were good and the waterfowl had started to return. We saw a lot of canadian geese nesting.
There were also quite a few american coots, especially near the shoreline of Phantom Lake.

We also saw some blue-winged teal and a few ring-necked ducks.

The highlight of the trip were the trumpeter swans. As you can see in the pictures they have already begun to nest. We will need to come back again in June to hopefully photograph the cygnets. We saw about a dozen swans throughout Crex.

We did not see as many raptors as we have on past trips. This osprey had left it's platform and was scouring the lakes and ponds for fish. The only other raptor that we saw was a northern harrier but it was flying too fast to get a picture. In the past we have also seen kestrels, red-tails, and peregrine at Crex.

Some of the sandhill cranes have returned. In the fall, Crex is usually home to large flocks of sandhills which feed on the refuge fields. On this trip we only saw about a half dozen cranes, all of them foraging in several areas that had been control burned. All were painted up for mating season looking a lot more orange then the ones that I photographed in the Bosque del Apache earlier this year in February.
As usual the red-winged black birds were "singing in the marsh, just singing in the marsh".
On the way out we passed several bird houses on the grounds of the local airport. On the pole for each house stood a tree swallow, their metallic teal wings glinting in the bright sun.
We had a great time being outside and enjoying the weather. We plan to return in early June when we hope to see more waterfowl and trumpeter cygnets.