Prescott Waterfowl and others

This last weekend I also paid another visit to Prescott, WI to see if I could get some more pics of the harlequin duck. On Friday, the day before I went it had been spotted close to shore so I was hoping that I would get some good pics in nice light but alas nature is unpredictable. The harlequin did not show up for the hour and a half I spent looking. I did find some wildlife to photograph though. From the Wisconsin side of the river I got some pics of one of the harlequin peregrine falcons which was perched up on one of the tresses of the railroad bridge. I posted those pictures on an earlier post.

On the Minnesota side of the river I found a few waterfowl at Douglas Point. Common goldeneye have been pretty common throughout most of the winter but this turned out to be a pretty nice shot with this goldeneye catching some breakfast.
I also spotted some new arrivals. This group of scaup, consisting of 3 males and 2 females, were searching the shallow waters of Douglas Point for a meal.
I am not sure if these are greater or lesser scaup. It is just really hard for me to tell by the shape of the head. Fortunately there are many great birders, who are much better at identification then I am, who occasionally drop by the blog. Hopefully one one of them will be so kind as to post in the comments below and let me know which type these are. On the way out I found a red-tailed hawk perched on the hill that leads up by Carpenter Nature Center.
A couple of people mentioned on my last post about how difficult it is to get a red-tail to sit still for a photo. The best way that I have found is to use your car as a blind. This is very easy around where I live because red-tails are very common and most of them hang out close to the road. It is best to pull over across the street from where the hawk is perched. If it is on the side of the road that I am on I will usually try and turn around and come at it from the opposite side.

There are two reasons for this, the first is because if you get too close you are likely to spook the hawk, even from inside a car. The other reason why it is best to be on the opposite side of the street is so that you can shoot out the drivers side window instead of shooting through the passenger window from across the car. I have twisted myself into some very interesting positions to try and get a shot that is on the opposite side of the car.

In search of Ross's gull, snowy owl, and harlequin duck

While I was up in Duluth and Two Harbors doing the Christmas Bird Count last weekend all of the cool birds where spotted hanging out down in the Twin Cities. First there was a Ross's gull spotted in South Saint Paul, which is about 5 minutes from my house, on Saturday. Then a snowy owl was spotted at the Minneapolis Airport, 20 minutes from home, on Saturday and finally a harlequin duck or two was spotted in Hasting, MN, about 15 minutes from home.

I didn't get home from Two Harbors until after dark on Sunday and so Monday after work was my time to go out and chase the cool birds around the Twin Cities. Since the Ross's gull was extremely rare, only a few sightings ever reported in Minnesota, many people were out looking for it on Sunday with out any luck. So I decided to concentrate on the other two.

Since the airport is close to work I headed over there first. I drove around the airport a couple of times but did not see the owl. Daylight was quickly fading and I was getting worried about a visit from airport police or someone worse, driving around the airport looking for a bird tends to arise suspicion since 911, so I decided to make a quick trip over to Hastings.

When I got to the St Croix river, where the bird(s) had been seen, the sun was already low in the sky. I figured that I did not have a lot of time so I threw on my boots, grabbed my gear and headed down to the shoreline. There was quite a bit of activity in the open water so I began to scan for my target. The first thing to draw my attention were the larger birds like the Canadian geese and trumpeter swans.Next I looked further out but I just spotted some more swans coming towards me.

As the royal procession of swans swam by they were observed by a group of commoners, common goldeneye and common mergansers that is.I also spotted a few ring-necked ducks, redhead duck and canvasback but still no harlequin.The light was fading fast, it looked like I would be struck out 3 out of 3 on this day. I figured that I would try and salvage my time by checking out the goldeneyes to see if their might be any Barrow's mixed in with the commons.And that is when I spotted it. Mixed in with the goldeneye was a harlequin. I tried to keep the camera on him but the light was getting bad and he was quite a ways away.He moved off from the goldeneyes to go check out some chick. Ultimately I got him alone. These were definitely not great shots but this was my first harlequin, a lifer if I kept a true life list. Eventually I hope to build a website to go along with the blog and that time I will feature my life list, in pictures, on the site. Hopefully before that time comes I will have the opportunity to get some better pictures of harlequin ducks but if not I will be happy to at least have pictures that you can definitely identify as a harlequin.

Birding in Yellowstone part 1: water fowl

From May 20th to the 25th we took our annual trip to Yellowstone National Park. This is the 6th year in a row that we have made a trip to Yellowstone/Grand Tetons. We have been their 3 times in the end of September and now 3 times in the end of May.

When we go in the fall we typically stay down in Jackson, WY and spend most of our time down in the Tetons photographing moose. When we go in the spring we stay up in West Yellowstone and spend most of our time on the northern loop of Yellowstone. Unfortunately this year the weather was not as good as it has been on past trips so we did not see as much as we usually have.

We did see quite a bit of waterfowl this year. We spotted these lesser scaup swimming in the Bridge Bay of Lake Yellowstone. This picture was one of the few pictures that we were able to take on Tuesday. It snowed pretty much every day that we were at the park but on Tuesday it snowed all day long. This made the visibility pretty poor which made it very difficult to take pictures.

Thursday we had a bit better weather. It still cloudy that day but it only snowed off and on. While driving through the park we noticed a pair of common merganser swimming in the Gibbon River. I was pretty excited because grebes, loons and mergansers are some of my favorite non-raptors. So I stopped to take some pictures. As I moved up to get even with them to take their picture the pair kept swimming upstream. The current was pretty quick so they were not able to swim very fast. Each time I would get even with them I would stop to shoot and they would move further up stream. This happened a few times until I decided to get smart and wait to stop until I got a head of them. As usual it was the birds that out smarted me. As soon as I got further upstream then they were, they turned around and shot down stream flying quickly away on the current. I got a few more shots as I walked back to the car but I decided that if they were that determined not to have their picture taken that it would be better to be satisfied with the pictures that I had rather then stress the birds out any more.

We spotted this barrow's goldeneye on Floating Island Lake. This trumpeter swan was also photographed at Floating Island Lake. He seemed to have problems with the neighbors. A couple of times he chased canadian geese around the lake shore.
We spotted a group of american white pelicans swimming in the Yellowstone River. This was about the only time on Tuesday that it was not snowing. The break lasted long enough for me to get a couple of shots. I will post more bird pics as well as some of the other pics that we took in the next few posts.