Snow Buntings

I took part of a day of off work Thursday and headed up to the North Shore to do some birding. Things are kind of quiet in the southern part of Minnesota, where I live, since many of the birds have left the area and gone south. So I was hoping that by going north I could find some of the northern species that sometimes spend the winter in the northern portion of the state.

My target species where northern hawk owls, black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers, crossbills, grossbeaks, bohemian waxwings or even just some simple snow bunting like the ones pictured above. Unfortunately it was pretty slow up north also so the best bird that I found was a red-breasted nuthatch, which are fairly common up north but a bird we don't see as often in the south part of the state. I photographed these snow buntings up in Duluth last October.