Have a happy wild Tom Turkey Thanksgiving

 Did you know that only the mature male turkey (called a tom) makes a gobble sound? Females (called hens) only cluck.

Time to Talk Turkey

 The wild turkey is a large ground dwelling bird found in North America. They are the largest member of the order Galliformes and they were an important food source of the Native Americans. Early explorers brought turkeys back to Europe where they were domesticated, one of only two domesticated species that originated in North America. The birds that were brought back to Europe were from a subspecies in Mexico that had white tips on the end of the tail feathers, instead of a tan color like these wild turkeys do. Much of the early trade with North America went through Constantinople on its way to Britain which is how they got the name turkey. Wild turkeys were wiped out in much of their range by the early 1900's because of hunting and habitat lose. In the 1940's wild turkeys were trapped and released into areas where they were no longer found. They have recovered very well over the past 70 years and they are now found in every state in the U.S. except for Alaska.
In the late 1700's Benjamin Franklin sent a letter to his sister in which he expressed his opinion on why he thought that the turkey would be a more appropriate representative of the United States. The bald eagle was chosen to be the symbol of the new nation but the turkey became a symbol of one of our most honored national holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Birding Dodge Nature Center

While I did take quite a few dragonfly pics at the Dodge Nature Center, when I visited in mid June, I did get a few bird pics too.

Even though house wrens have a cheerful bubbly song they can be very aggressive and territorial during the nesting season. They will often work hard to prevent other cavity nesters from nesting in or near their territory. This may include filling empty potential cavity nesting sites with sticks or even breaking the eggs of other birds.
At Dodge there seems to be enough room for the house wrens and eastern bluebirds, a competing cavity nester, to coexist. The bluebirds seem to occupy at least one of the bird houses. Inside they will build a nest made of grass, sometimes they use pine needles however there are few pines in the area so they are most likely using grass, and line it with fine grass and feathers. The clutch is typically between 3 to 6 eggs which will hatch in about 12 to 18 days. The young fledge in about 17 to 20 days, sometimes the male will continue to feed the fledglings while the female begins another nest.

Over looking one of the many small ponds that are part of the nature center I found a green heron. Green herons spend much of their time foraging for small fish, frogs and insects at ponds, rivers and other marshy areas. A clever bird, they will sometimes drop bait, like worms, sticks or feathers, on to the water to attract fish or frogs to come to the surface.

I also spotted another member of the heron family at another pond. The great egret hunts its prey, mainly fish, frogs and reptiles, by stealthily wading through the water until it finds something to eat. At that point it will slowly move into position and then lunge forward with its beak to impale its prey.
Dodge has a pretty good population of wild turkeys. Last fall I found about 30 of them on one visit, most of them were females with only a few toms. On this trip their were 3 toms in the field right behind the headquarters building. Turkeys are not what most people would consider a beautiful bird but I like the way that they look in the sun light, their feathers get an almost metallic look to them.

Great Horned Owl

After taking some pictures of hooded mergansers at Black Dog Lake on the last day of January I headed down Cedar Ave to Lakeville to try and get some more shots of the great horned owls nest there. When I arrived the female was still in the nest. She was hunkered down pretty well so I could not really get any pictures of her except for her tufts. Since she was not visible for photos I decide to take a look around to see if I could locate the male. It did not take me long to find him.
He was perched in a tree on the opposite side of the woods from where I was standing. I did manage to find an opening through most of the branches that allowed me to get a couple of pics but I was not happy with all the clutter in the pictures so I skirted around the south side of the woods, making a wide arch so that I would not spook him, in order to see if I would have a better view on the other side.
I did finally find a spot where I had a good view of the owl with very little clutter in front of it. It was getting late in the day and he was beginning to scan the area searching for possible prey so I decided it was time for me to leave. I decided to take the back way home instead of the freeway. It takes a bit longer but there is also more opportunity to find something interesting to shoot on back roads. I did find a couple of things on my way back that night. First I found an open field that was full of wild turkeys searching the ground for left over seed.Further down the road I found a pair of female ring-necked pheasant. (Thanks Mike) This was the best look that I got as I pulled off the road and jumped out of the truck to take this shot in the waning light.
Unfortunately the bird flushed so I could not get any better shots.

Spring Lake Park

On Sunday the 13th of January I ran over to Spring Lake Park in Dakota County to play a little with the new snow shoes that I got for Christmas. I have never been on snow shoes before but after ending up in waist deep snow while photographing owls up north a few years ago I started asking for a pair each year for Christmas. It took a while but I finally convinced Michelle to get me a pair. So I went to the park to try and get used to putting them on and did a little walking. On my way home I spotted a pair of red-tailed hawks perched in a tree on a hill over looking the road. One of the hawks took off and was kind enough to soar on some thermals overhead while I shot some pics. The other hawk must have taken off while I was shooting because it was gone when I turned back around. I also spotted a lot of turkeys on my way home.

There were several groups in the fields and on the side of the road. I learned last weekend that wild turkey are fox squirrels are the main prey of the golden eagles that are wintering in south east Minnesota and south western Wisconsin.With the large numbers of wild turkeys that we have in southern Minnesota it would appear that the eagles may be celebrating Thanksgiving frequently over the winter.

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.

Let's get ready to ruummmble!

On Monday the 10th my new Canon 40D came in and so I headed off to Dodge Nature Center to try it out. While I was there I spotted a couple of groups of wild turkeys that had come out of the woods to forage the lawns by the headquarters. There were two groups with a total off 29 turkeys.

I was taking picture when I saw another tom come out of the woods alone. The toms running the two groups that I was photographing puffed up and started heading to the intruder, their harems following behind.After a short stare down the 3 toms erupted into a frenzy of furry and feathers.The intruder held his ground for a while but the two group leaders where relentless and eventually he retreated back into the woods and the groups went about on their merry way.