South St Paul Riverfront Trail

When I think of birding locations the Twin Cities suburb of South St Paul, the town which I grew up in, does not usually come to mind. In December of last year, however, I made numerous visits to my old home town. South St Paul, like much of the Twin Cities was built on the banks of the Mississippi River. I never ventured down to the river when I was growing up, I got grounded for going to the local pond so I probably would have been incarcerated for life for going to the river, which is probably why I was not aware of this gem that was right in my own back yard.

Back when I was young most of the area by the river was dominated by the stock yards which besides being the largest in the world were also dirty and smelly. Now most of the area has been redeveloped and it now includes a nice 6.5 mile trail that runs along the river. Since the trail is on the other side of the railroad tracks you have to access it by an overhead walkway.

As winter takes a hold of this area many of the birds that rely on water to live migrate south looking for open water. Up until the end of December the Mississippi River bordering South St Paul was still open providing habitat for many of these birds. Bald eagles could frequently be seen flying low over the river in search of a fish or perched in the trees that line parts of the river bank.

Down in the water there were plenty of waterfowl swimming around looking for food. There were plenty of Canada geese and mallards dabbling in the water looking for vegetation as well as several different types of diving ducks like common mergansers and common goldeneye looking for fish.

The big excitement this year was the presence of a female long-tailed duck. These ducks breed up in the Arctic circle and usually winter on the Atlantic or Pacific coast. Occasionally one or two is found inland, where there is open water, and fortunately this time it was our turn. The river in South St Paul has now frozen up, we have had several days of sub zero temps in a row, and many of the birds have probably moved further down river near Hastings, MN / Prescott, WI where there is still open water.

Watery Wednesday: Common Goldeneye

A couple of days ago the wind turned from the southeast and started to blow hard from the northwest. This was our first warning that winter is not that far away here in the north. The temps have dropped about 20 degrees since then with our high temps only reaching up into the fifties. With the changing of the season many of our local birds will begin to leave on their journey south but they will be replaced by birds from the north who will spend their winter here.

One of these birds is the common goldeneye. These birds nest from the southern edge of Canada all the way north up to the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska. They nest in cavities, such as hollow trees or nesting boxes, near wooded lakes or rivers. The females care for both the eggs, during incubation, and the chicks, who can swim and find their own food about 24 hours after they hatch.

During the winter the goldeneye migrate south to protected coastal bays and waterways or open inland lakes and rivers. Here in my area we often see large flocks of them in open areas of the Mississippi River. There they can be seen diving under the water in search of crustaceans and small fish, during the warmer months they also eat a lot of aquatic insects. Often birders around here can be found scanning flocks of common goldeneye looking for a possible Barrow's goldeneye that might be mixed in. Barrow's goldeneye sightings are pretty rare in Minnesota so they tend to get a lot of attention.

Watery Wednesday: Ducks of Point Douglas

With the weather her getting warmer, it got above 60 degrees on Monday, I have been out looking to photograph waterfowl that should begin migrating through the area. Unfortunately we have not consistently had enough warm days for much of the ice to melt yet so mainly I have just been seeing the mallards, geese, swans and common mergansers that have been around for most of the winter.

Before the birds moved south I did make a couple of trips down to Douglas Point, which is across from Prescott, WI, where I did get a few nice photos.

Back in December(12-13) when I took these pics there were several large flocks of common goldeneye hanging around in the river near Prescott. It sometimes made it difficult to find the harlequin duck, who would often swim with groups of golden eye. this was difficult because the goldeneye and harlequin are about the same size and both are diving ducks so they have similar behavior. As winter continued on the number of goldeneyes that stayed decreased.

I usually tend to stay away from photographing female ducks, let alone posting the pics, because so many different types of female ducks are difficult to identify because they look so similar to females of other types. However since this duck had just captured a huge fish I decided to capture a couple of her images on my camera and now the blog.

I believe that it is a mallard but since the mallard is a dabbling duck, as compared to a diving duck, it would be lot less likely to be eating a large fish. As a dabbler mallards typically eat aquatic vegetation as well as insects and invertebrates although a little extra protein during the winter is nothing to turn your beak on. It is very possible that the fish was already dead when the mallard found it. Either way as soon as she got the fish lined up correctly in her bill she tipped her head back and ate it whole.

Watery Wednesday: Prescott Waterfowl

As the temps begins to get warmer and winter loosens its grip where I live I am beginning to get excited about the upcoming spring migration. I know that it will still be a while before many of the song birds migrate back through but it may be only a matter of several weeks, as soon as some of the ice on the lakes and river melt, before we start to see migrating waterfowl, although it has really not been very long since I last saw many of these birds, usually they are the last to migrate and the first ones back

There were quite a few interesting gulls that were hanging around Black Dog Lake and Prescott, WI back in December. Unfortunately those that were more exciting, or at least more rare in Minnesota, were never in a good spot for me to photograph. I did however get this pretty good shot of a ring-billed gull as he flew past.

Redhead ducks typically stand out and are easy to identify with their bright red head, however when their are also canvas back ducks around you need to look a little closer.

The canvas back has a thinner, more pointed bill then the red head duck. It also has a bright red eye where the red heads eye is more of an orange color.

Common goldeneye often spend the entire winter in the area as long as there is some open water. This is an immature bird. You can this by how gray he is and by the fact that his eyes are not yet the bright golden color of the adults.

Trumpeter swans are another bird that will stick around as long as there is open water. Once on the verge of extinction these beautiful birds are pretty easy to find in this area year round.

First Bird of 2008

With the beginning of the new year a lot of people have been posting what was the first bird that they saw or heard in 2008 on the MOU list server. Most of them have seen some of our more colorful Minnesota winter birds like cardinals, robins, and goldfinch. I was not so lucky. The first bird that I spotted yesterday was a crow. Not much of a surprise there since we have a lot of crows around during the winter months. The first bird that I photographed in 2008 was this pair of eagles that I found on the river near Alma, Wisconsin.
After I checked out Alma for a bit I headed back up to the cities. Typically I take the MN side of the river but this time I opted for a bit of change and drove up the Wisconsin side. While I was heading north I spotted a red fox running on the side of the road near Pepin, WI.
I pulled over to the side of the road and snapped a few shots. I was not sure what he was at first so unfortunately I was only able to get a couple of pics of him running into the woods. It was still pretty cool. I also spotted an American goldfinch near Pepin.

I continued north up the Wisconsin side of the river until I got to Prescott, WI. There I stopped and looked for the barrow's goldeneye and harlequin duck that have been reported hanging around there. Unfortunately I was not able to spot either of them just a lot of Canada geese, mallards, common mergansers, and common goldeneye.There were also a couple of coots hanging around, including this one which was having a hard time holding on to its breakfast.The windchill was brutally cold so I had to make frequent trips to the truck to thaw out my fingers. After about an hour of freezing my butt off I decided to move on. I had planned to stop at Carpenter Nature Center since it is right down the road from Prescott and Point Douglas. Unfortunately due to the holiday Carpenter was closed. I was getting hungry so I decided to head home.

Duluth Christmas Bird Count

Saturday December 15th I participated in my first Christmas Bird Count. I had thought about helping in a CBC in the past but always had other things going on. I have been photographing wildlife for about 10 years but up until this year I was more of a casual birder. This year, as I have become more serious about birding the CBC has become a much higher priority for me. So I have arranged much of my holiday activities to allow me to participate in several CBCs. Duluth was the first one that I chose. I could have helped in a CBC closer to home. The one in Eagan, which is a 5 minute drive, was held that same day but Duluth is a great place to bird and they get species that we do not often see down in the Twin Cities. So I volunteered for Duluth and for the Two Harbors CBC on the 16th.

So I got up Saturday morning, at about 3:30 am, got ready and headed up to Duluth. I met Mike Hendrickson, our group leader, and the rest of the group at 7:15 am at the Glensheen Manshion on the north side of Duluth. There were five of us in the group, Mike and myself another birder from the Duluth area and a couple from the Twin Cities. We started by checking out the Glensheen grounds and then continued west across our assigned area.

Things started out slow. That was prolly due to the cold. When I left the Twin Cities at 4:30 am it was 2 degrees above zero with a -9 wind chill factor. When I arrived in Duluth it was 3 degrees below zero with a wind chill close to -20. It was also still pretty dark out so most of our sightings were by call.

Things began to pick up as the sun came up and began to warm things up. Most of what we saw or heard were chickadees or woodpeckers.

During our count we spotted 3 types of woodpeckers. There were hairy woodpeckers, like the one above, downy woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers. It seems to be a good year for woodpeckers in Duluth this year. There were 2 three-toed woodpeckers counted during the CDC which was the first time that species had been seen during the Duluth CBC. There was also 3 black-backed woodpeckers seen, which tied the CBC record, 33 pileated woodpeckers and 88 hairy woodpeckers which are both new high totals. Our group spotted quite a few hairy and at least 5 pileated.

In the late morning we got excited when we came across a flock of about 120 bohemian waxwings.
I had read on the list server, it was Mike Hendricks our group leader who had posted it, that there had been a flock of around 500 of the waxwings down on Park Point the week prior to the count. So I was hoping that we would see some and that I would get some pics.
But waxwings are very nomadic and go where the berries are.

Large flocks usually strip the trees of their fruit fairly quickly and then they move on.This group was working on a mountain ash that was in some ones front yard in a residential area.The fun thing to watch though was after they ate some berries they would go to a neighboring pine tree for a drink of snow.I could have sat and watched them eat the snow all day but we had a job to do and so we moved on.Some of the more interesting species that our group spotted were a boreal chickadee, great gray owl, and a coopers hawk. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of these.

We finished our area at around 3:00-3:30 so I headed off to check in at my hotel but on the way there I checked out the channel under the lift bridge. In the channel was a large flock of common goldeneye.

So I took some pics until the sun set.I finally went to my hotel and checked in after it got dark. When I got to my room I shed all my extra layers of winter clothing and laid down on the bed. I woke up 3 hours later. Unfortunately it was too late for me to make the compilation dinner but from the information that I received there was a total of 55 species counted which is one less then the average of 56. The slow birding was prolly due to the weather which has been colder, with more snow, then in recent years.

Common goldeneye and hooded merganser hybrid at Vadnais Lake

One of the more interesting birds that was swimming around Vadnais Lake appears to be a common goldeneye and hooded merganser hybrid.
This bird was pretty confusing at first.
But I did a bit of research on the web and found that others have seen this mix and there are pictures here and there and all pretty much look the same.

It was swimming around with a group common goldeneye.In a different group of goldeneye I did spot a hooded merganser female. She seemed to be hanging out with the goldeneye.So it seems that the two species do socialize.

Common goldeneye at Vadnais Lake

Another duck that has been visiting Vadnais Lake is the common goldeneye.
Common goldeneye are diving ducks and forage mostly underwater. They typically feed on aquatic insects, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish.
They breed in northern boreal forests worldwide. They like small lakes and ponds, preferably with out fish that compete for food, in Canada, the northern United States, Scandinavia, and Russia.

The common goldeneye is a cavity nester. They will usually nest in large cavities made by broken tree limbs or pileated woodpeckers. They will also use nesting boxes. Female goldeneyes typically lay 7 to 10 eggs which they incubate for 28 to 32 days. Sometimes they will lay their eggs in the nests of other females. They have even been known to lay eggs in the nest of another type of duck.

The young goldeneye leave the nest a day or two after hatching. The mother leads them to the water where they are already able to feed themselves. They take 8 to 9 weeks to fledge but the mother typically abandons them before they can fly. Some times when a mother abandons her brood too early or there is a territorial dispute chicks will join another females brood. These large mixed broods are called a creche.

Male common goldeneye usually leave the females a week or two into the incubation of the eggs and begins a molt migration. They typically head north to larger lakes, rivers and bays. The winter migration usually begins later then most of the other types of ducks. They do not typically migrate far south, often they stay as far north as they can find open water.