Birding from Montana

Well it has been a couple of really great but busy days. Yesterday we were out from 7am until about 10:30 pm, we got back and we were beat. I could not even stay up long enough to download the memory cards so that we could use them today. So this morning I had to do the download and back up before we could leave, which was a bummer because even though the day was supposed to be cloudy the morning was sunny and beautiful. The sun lasted until about noon then it got hazy and by the time that we were heading back at around 7pm it started raining. I can't complain too much because we have had some great opportunities to take some great pics. I think that I will be posting Yellowstone trip pics for quite a while, here are a couple of pics from Bowdoin NWR that I took on Saturday.

Wilson's phalarope
black-necked stilt

There will be a lot more pictures to come.

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.

A Little Appetizer from our Trip

So far we have only been gone 3 days but we have a lot of good pics, about 30gb worth. I did not have a lot of time, I would prefer to spend more time in the park shooting, but I did get up early to put together a couple of pics that we took on Friday, just to start giving you a preview of the posts that I will be making when I return.

western meadowlark
yellow-headed blackbird

I will try to post some more pics as we continue on the trip as well as a few more posts of warblers and other passerines that I took before we left.

Warblers from Wood Lake to Hold You Over

I have spent the past couple of days exploring some of the best birding spots in Montana. Friday I was at Medecine Lake NWR and today I made my first trip to Bowdion NWR. This part of Montana appears to going through some what of a drought and both parks appeared to be much dryer then normal, so birding was harder then it was last year. I have not had time to upload any pics, since we just got to the hotel after a full day of birding and driving, but I do have some nice shots that I took at Wood Lake Nature Center on May 9th.

grackle
yellow-rumped warbler
palm warbler
black and white warbler

orange-crowned warbler

Tomorrow we head into Yellowstone. Depending on how late that we shoot I will try and get a couple of sample pics of the trip uploaded.

Butterflies from Fort Snelling State Park

I will be out birding today and hopefully getting a lot of good pics to share. I have to keep John entertained after all, LOL. Hopefully I will start getting some pics up in a couple of days but right now I am stuck using a hotel PC today and tomorrow so no uploading. But I usually am prepared and I have a few posts of pics waiting. While birding around Fort Snelling I stopped to take a few butterfly pics.

mourning cloak
Cabbage white.

This was the first time that I have seen cabbage white butterflies so I am hopeful that soon there will be more butterflies and dragonflies to photograph. Unfortunately a lot of the best places that I found last year are currently under water, we had more snow last winter and a rainy spring so there is a lot of extra water around.

Some Dodge for you while I drive

I apologize for my lack of witty reporte on this post and the last. I am leaving shortly for a short trip and have been trying to get things taken care of so that I can leave. I will try and blog a bit while I am traveling. This will depend on the Internet connections at hotels and how much time that I have when I am not out shooting. Here are some more pics from Dodge Nature Center for you to enjoy while I drive.

eastern phoebe
cedar waxwing

house wren
sora
painted turtle

Birding Dodge Nature Center

Here are some more pictures from Dodge Nature Center that I took on May 5th

female redwinged blackbird
palm warbler


Tennessee warbler

yellow warbler

yellowthroat
broadwinged hawk

Birding Close to Home.

I have been making a concerted effort to try and do more birding closer to home lately. This is partly to help the environment and partly to help my wallet. So far this has not been a problem since the warblers are migrating through the area and giving all of us birders plenty to look at and photograph. One place that I have been spending some more time at this year has been Dodge Nature Center. I visited Dodge on the first Saturday in May and had a pretty good day.
One thing that I have been seeing more of this year are female red-winged blackbirds. They have always been around in years past but the females typically are harder to spot. That is because they usually spend most of their time down in the reeds where their coloration helps to camouflage them. This year though it seems like I am seeing more of them out in the open. I am not sure why this is. Maybe the female red-winged blackbirds are sick of sitting in the shadows and want their turn in the light, they see a woman running for president this year and have decided that this is their year.

Some birds, like northern cardinals, are pretty common around here all year long, but that does not mean that if a cardinal gives me a great pose that I will not stop to take its pic.
White-breasted nuthatch are another year round resident.
Yellow-rumped warbles are now extremely common.
Palm warblers are fairly numerous right now also. They are usually the ones hoping around on the ground.
You can also tell the palm warblers by their typical little tail bopping.

The common yellowthroat is one of nine species of yellowthroats. They range through out the US and Canada, except the far north, during the summer and migrate to Mexico during the winter.
This photo is not great but it is not usually that easy to get a picture of a sora so I was happy just to get a recognizable photo. The sora is a member of the rail family. It lives in the cattails in fresh water mashes and is more usually heard then it is seen.
On the other hand wild turkeys have become quite plentiful around here. Each evening they can be seen in fields through out most of the state.
A pleasant surprise on this evening was spotting a coopers hawk out on the prowl. I was able to get a couple of shots as it flew over head.
Coopers hawks are part of the accipiter family of hawks. Accipiters have rounded wings just like other hawks, buteos, do but the wings are shorter and their tails are longer. This gives them more maneuverability when they fly which they need since much of their diet consists of small birds. The other accipiters that are native to North America would be the sharp-shinned hawk and the goshawk.

The birds were not the only thing out on that evening. Reptiles, like these painted turtles, are cold blooded and can not regulate their body temperature on there own. That is why you can often see them out sunning themselves on nice days.
As dusk approached the white-tailed deer began to come out. Minnesota has an over abundance of white-tailed deer. This is due to loss of natural predators like timber wolves and bear. Hunting helps to curve some of the over population. Even though I have never hunted and I am not a very big fan of hunting, it is more merciful to put some deer down quick through hunting then to allow them to starve to death in the winter because there is not enough food to support the large population. However many of the deer have gotten smart and live inside the city limits where hunting is not allowed.