Wood Duck

One of the more colorful ducks that you can find in North America is the wood duck. These ducks can be found year round in most of the eastern half of the US as well as the west coast. They inhabit rivers, lakes, ponds and other wetlands where they dabble on the surface of the water in search of seeds, fruit and insects. They are also one of the most popular game birds in North America.

Wood ducks got there name because they are one of the few ducks that nest in trees. As a cavity nester they make their nest in a hole in a tree, often those made by piliated woodpeckers, and line the cavity with down from the female. The trees are usually located next to water but if good nesting sites are scarce can be located over a mile away. Wood ducks will also use nesting boxes to build their nest. After the young wood ducks hatch, their mother calls them and they have to jump down from the nest, with out mom's help, to follow her out to the water.

National Eagle Center

On Saturday I took a trip down the Mississippi River to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN to attend a workshop on golden eagle identification. This is a prelude to the golden eagle survey that is held in south east Minnesota and Western Wisconsin each January.

The survey is sponsored by the National Eagle Center. The purpose of the workshop is to help those people interested in participating in the survey distinguish between golden eagles and immature bald eagles, both of which can be found in the same approximate area. I have participated in the survey the past two years. I have also taken the workshop in the past so I knew most of the info but a refresher never hurts and Scott Mehus, who runs the survey and the workshop, always ends the program by taking people out to a location where he knows golden eagles can be found

The Eagle C enter is a great facility located on the banks of the Mississippi River at the northern end of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. Since the Upper Mississippi River NWFR hosts the largest number of wintering bald eagles in the continental US, the National Eagle Center is an a perfect location. With a number of decks, like this one outside on the river, lots of windows, marked with decals to prevent birds from flying into them, and plenty of scopes and binoculars to use it is tough not to see an bald eagle here. If you happen to visit at a slow time when there are no eagles around outside you can always check out one of the four resident bald eagles at the center. The bald eagles include Angel, pictured above, Harriot, Columbia, and the newest arrival Was'aka an three year old immature bird from Florida. On my way down to the eagle center I spotted about 35 eagles on the river, much of which is now frozen unlike in these pictures which I took at the end of October.

Over the past few years the center has been branching out to look into the golden eagle population that spends winter in southeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin. After watching the golden eagles in the winter for several years Scott, who works at the center, put together a survey in 2005 to try and get an idea of the number of golden eagles wintering in the area. In 2005 25 people participated in the survey and they counted 21 golden eagles. Over the past five years the number of participants in the survey has increased, 2009 was the largest group with 100 people, which has helped to find an increasing number of eagles each year, 88 in 2009.

In 2008 the National Eagle Center went a step further and procured a golden eagle education bird from the California Raptor Center. This allowed visitors to the center to see a golden eagle up close. In 2009 a golden eagle inadvertently caught in a coyote trap in western Wisconsin became the first bird in a joint research project between the center and Audubon Society of Minnesota, with support from the Minnesota and Wisconsin DNR and a couple other groups. Golden eagle 42, nick named Whitey, was fitted with a satellite tracking pack when he was released, he was rehabilitated at The Raptor Center. The project hopes to discover where these golden eagles spend their summer as well as general research on behavior and migration. Whitey traveled from Wisconsin up into Canada and spent his summer up at the arctic circle north of Churchill. Currently Whitey has returned to western Wisconsin to spend the winter. The project hopes to tag a couple more eagles this winter if possible so that they can learn more about these magnificent winter visitors.

For more information about the Golden Eagle Project check out this website at Audubon Minnesota.

Robber Fly

When I began photographing wildlife I started by mostly photographing raptors and mammals. As time went by I branched out and began to photograph all sorts of birds, not just raptors. After I started the blog and my interest branched out again and I began to photograph butterflies and dragonflies, but I did not stop there. I now stop to photograph any interesting insect that I find while I am out shooting, like this robber fly that I photographed at Wild River State Park back in August of 2008.

Robber flies are part of the Asilidae family which contains over 7000 species world wide. Robber flies all have two large compound eyes, bristles protruding from their face, and a stout beak like mouth. They use this beak, proboscis, to inject their prey with neurotoxin and proteolytic enzymes which paralyze the prey and break down its insides so that the robber fly can drink the protein though it's proboscis. Typical prey includes flies, grasshoppers, beetles, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, bees and other insects.

Tropical Waterlily Pink Passion

Photographed at the Como Zoo water garden during the summer.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

One of the first warblers that we see here in Minnesota each spring and last ones that we see in the fall is the yellow-rumped warbler. This is because they have a more northern winter range then most of the other warblers, stretching as far north as northern Indiana and Illinois.

One reason that they can survive in harsher northern climates may be the fact that they are more of a generalist, when it comes to eating, then many other types of warblers. They eat plenty of insect, and will often catch them in the air, but they will also eat seeds and berries when there are no insects available, including wax myrtle and bayberry which they can digest and other warblers can not.

In The Sky... by Katherine Sessor

In the sky I see

Clouds, black and grey

In the sky I want to be

A bird and fly away

In the sky I see

Stars so bright

In the sky I want to be

The Moon and shine my light

In the sky I see

The sun's blinding rays

in the sky I want to be

A cloud to comfort my days

Cedar Waxwing

Pied-billed Grebe

The pied-billed grebe is a common water fowl seen on many ponds and lakes through out North America, as well as part of South America. At first glance many people would classify them as a small duck however since it is a grebe it does not have webbed feet like a duck does. Instead it has three individual toes, each of which is lobed at the end which helps the grebe to swim.
Pied-billed grebes spend most of their lives in the water. They hunt by diving under the water in search of crustaceans, frogs, aquatic insects and small fish, as seen in the pictures above. When predators are in the area the pied-billed grebe will most often sink under the water to escape rather then flying away. Nesting also occurs on the water. They form an open bowl shaped nest made of floating vegetation which is usually anchored by cattails. When the young are born they soon leave the nest, riding on their parents back for several weeks until they are able to swim on their own.

Bell Museum of Natural History

This weekend I attended the annual Minnesota Ornithologists' Union Paper Sessions. The Paper Sessions is a day long event where MOU members, as well as other people who are interested in birds, get together and talk about birds. There are seminars and vendor booths just like there are at most other events of this kind.

Each year the Paper Sessions is held at the Bell Museum of Natural History, which is located on the East Bank Campus of the University of Minnesota. The James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History was established in 1872 to collect, preserve, display and interpret Minnesota's diverse flora and fauna for research and teaching purposes as well as for public enjoyment and enrichment.

This was the third time that I have attended the paper sessions and my third trip to the Bell Museum. During lunch I spent much of my time looking around the museum and snapping a few pictures to share with you.

The Bell has almost four million specimens of mammals, birds, fish, plants, mollusks and insects. Most of the collection is stored and used for scientific research however the museum is home to several floors of dioramas depicting the natural life of Minnesota. Above are just a couple of examples. If you are ever in the Twin Cities and have a few minutes to spare I would definitely recommend a trip to the Bell.

Carolina Locust

The Carolina locust is a large grasshopper that can be found through out most of North America . It is called a black-winged grasshopper in Canada which is a more appropriate name since the Carolina locust is actually a grasshopper and not a locust. It is often found in sandy areas or on dirt roads where its color helps it to blend in. I photographed this Carolina locust at Crex Meadows in August.

Today's Flowers

Crown vetch photographed near the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge in the Minnesota Valley NWR.

Isn't Peanut Cute!

Today our new little kitten, Peanut, went in to the vet to get her booster shots.

She is doing great. Besides being ultra cute she is very healthy which is good considering our recent loss.

Michelle got the fun job of bringing her in this time. I got to bring her in for her first visit about a month ago. I took her in after work and she was pretty calm because that is the time that she usually sleeps. Michelle took her in early in the morning when she is usually more active and the report is that she was pretty squirmy.

She has gained about a pound since her first visit and now weighs around four pounds.

Even though she is still quite small she is ferocious and always willing to throw down with her big brother Magic.

Clouds over the Yellowstone River

Have you ever wondered if the clouds ever stop over top of a shiny body of water just to check out their own reflection?

Butterfly

DDT and the Bald Eagle

In 1948 Paul Herman Muller, a Swiss chemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovering of the use of the chemical Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane as an insecticide. This chemical was used to kill mosquitoes during Word War II, which lead to a decline in the number of people inflicted with malaria. After the war the use of the chemical was expanded and it was used as an insecticide on most farm fields.
It was not until 1962, with the publication of a book called Silent Spring, that people began to look at the long term effects of the use of chemicals. In the book Silent Spring, marine biologist and author Rachel Carson documented the effects of chemical pesticides on the environment.

In particular Carson noted that the chemical Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT, seemed to cause birds to produce thinner egg shells which resulted in decreases in the population of several bird species. DDT would travel up the food chain as insects with the poison in their system would be eaten by fish or small birds. The poison would be transferred to the fish or bird which would then get eaten by a larger bird. DDT would build up on birds that were higher up in the food chain each time they would eat some infected prey. Eventually the DDT would alter the birds calcium metabolism resulting in the production of thin shelled eggs that would usually break during incubation.

DDT effected many species of birds but some of the birds that were hit the worst were pelicans, brown pelicans worse then white, peregrine falcons, golden eagles and bald eagles. Silent Spring helped to launch the environmental movement and caused an uproar that eventually led to the ban of DDT in the US in 1972. Since DDT was banned all of the species mentioned above have made significant recoveries and all of those that were listed on the Endangered Species List have since been delisted.

The last to be removed from the Endangered Species List was the bald eagle which was removed in 2007. Bald eagles sightings are now quite common here in Minnesota. There are more eagles in Minnesota then any other state in the continental US. In 2007 they had counted 1312 nesting pair in Minnesota, in comparison their were only around 400 nesting pair in the entire continental US back in 1963, which was the year that I was born. In the winter eagles from all over Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and south central Canada congregate in several locations in southern Minnesota where they can find open water in which to fish. Reeds Landing is a small town on the Mississippi that sits across from where the Chippewa River empties into the Mississippi. The water typically stays open all year which is why you can great views of eagles like the ones above if you are willing to brave the intense January weather in Minnesota.