Spring!

 It's a little late but it looks like spring may have finally arrived here in Minnesota. The temperature has been slowly increasing which has melted much of the snow and opened up some of the water on some of the lakes. Already our early arrivals, like the great blue heron, are working hard to get things ready for their new family.

Heron Rookery

 St Patrick's Day was a reminder in the past that it was time to start watching for great blue herons at the rookery at the North Mississippi Regional Park. The herons typically began to arrive the a day or two after St Patrick's day. The males were usually the first to arrive. They would claim a nest and then wait for a female to arrive.

If a female liked a male heron's nest then the mating ritual would begin. The male would grab sticks from the trees on the island or from trees along the shore and bring them back to the nest. At the nest there was a ritual that the birds would perform, an almost intertwining of their long necks, with the male up high passing the stick and the female below accepting it. Then he would fly off to find another gift while she would use the stick to remodel the nest to her liking. Eventually this ritual would often lead to copulation and if the birds were lucky eggs. Unfortunately the summer after I took these photos a tornado hit the rookery destroying all of the nests and knocking over half of the trees. Last year I checked and none of the herons returned to the island. Most had probably moved on to less photographer accessible rookeries. But I keep checking and hoping that one day they will return.

Tuesday Tweets

The great blue heron is a common bird that is found through out most of North America. They are often seen  in ponds, marshes and other wetlands stalking their prey. They eat fish, insects, small mammals, small birds, reptiles and amphibians. They reside in both freshwater and saltwater habitats and can even be seen hunting in fields. They catch their prey with their long beak, often impaling larger prey. Although they look very large the average adult usually weighs 5 to 6 pound which is why they seem to float for a few seconds when they come in for a landing.

Welcome to Tuesday Tweets. To join in the fun, just post a photo of a bird on your blog then come here and enter your information in the inlinkz tool down below. Don't forget to put a link back to here on your blog and the pretty little banner photo. Then visit all of the sites that participate to see a lot of cool bird pics.
 

Great Blue Heron

We are quickly approaching the time of the year when the great blue herons return to the area. I usually begin to photograph them at the local rookery right after St Patrick's day. Unfortunately I am not sure if I will have the same opportunity this year. Last summer a tornado hit part of the city of Minneapolis and destroyed over half of the small island that the rookery was on. This island is located in the Mississippi River in the North Mississippi Regional Park and it was the best place to photograph nesting herons here in the Twin Cities. The tornado took out over half of the trees that were being used for nesting and destroyed all of the nests in the rookery. I hope that some will come back and nest in the remaining trees but who knows.

Sky Ballet

Path of Destruction

Earlier this year, May 22nd, a F2 tornado raged through North Minneapolis tearing the roofs off of houses and toppling trees. One person was killed by a falling tree and 30 others were injured. Many houses were damaged by the twister which caused a total of over 166 million dollars worth of damage. However not all of the homes destroyed in the storm belonged to people.
The tornado also hit the North Mississippi Regional Park where a large heron rookery was located. The rookery, pictured above, has provided a safe place for a large number of great blue herons to nest and raise their young for many years. Unfortunately on May 22 that ended. Compare the photo above taken this March as the birds were beginning to nest to the first photo, which is how the rookery looks now.
We were in Yellowstone when the tornado hit. We heard about the storm in the news but did not find out about the rookery until a little while after we returned. It is likely that many of the young heron chicks in the rookery were killed in the storm. The ones that were found still alive afterwards were taken to a local rehab center.
Trees through out the park were splintered and/or ripped from the ground. As I walked though the park I felt as though I was walking through tunnels at several locations, as chunks of trees that had fallen on to the path had been removed to allow people access to the trails.
With so many of the nesting trees gone I wonder if the herons will return to this spot again next year or will it be a tragedy that will continue to be felt for years to come?

Another Sign of Spring

One of the first signs of spring here each year is the return of the herons to the rookery in the North Mississippi Regional Park. They usually start to arrive around St Patrick's Day so I headed over on March 19th. The rookery is located on a small island in the Mississippi. The park, where I shoot from, is located on the west bank of the river. Since the river is not very wide at this point distance is not much of a problem.

Even though the rookery is not very far it is still difficult to get an unobstructed photograph of the herons on the nest, because of all of the tree branches. So the best time to get a pic is when they are flying to or from the rookery.

As part of their mating rituals the males will go out and search for branches to bring back to the females for nest improvement. So on sunny days it is possible to sit on the shore of the Mississippi and watch these large birds fly over head carrying sticks of all sizes.

When they arrive at the nest with a stick their is a intricate ritual where the male passes the stick to the female from beak to beak. She will then take the stick and work it into the nest. This helps to replace nesting material that is lost over the long winter. I hope this year to get a chance to photograph some of the chicks but unfortunately the rookery becomes much more difficult to see once the trees begin to leaf out.

Ballet in the Sky

As we get close to the end of February I begin to anticipate the return of the great blue herons to this area. There are a couple of heron rookeries here in the Twin Cities that begin to see life again by about the middle of March.

Most often when I see herons they are in the water on land near water. There large size and long legs make them appear kind of gangly, kind of the like the kid in grade school that grew so fast that they did not quite know how to control their own body.

Herons at the rookery are quite the opposite. They seem to float in the air like a leaf, suspended in time, until they land daintily, toes first with the grace of a ballet dancer, on a tiny twig.

North Mississippi Regional Park

Each year, as the long, cold, Minnesota winter comes to an end, it becomes difficult to hold back my excitement for the upcoming Spring and Summer. March and April are the tough months because even though the temps are getting warmer and the snow is melting it is still too early for many of the birds to migrate back through the area let alone butterflies and dragonflies. Fortunately during those months I have the North Mississippi Regional Park to help hold me over.

The North Mississippi Regional Park is located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Northern Minneapolis. It was jointly developed by the Minneapolis park board, Anoka County park board and the Three Rivers Park District. Because of its location north of downtown Minneapolis and its adjacency to the river it is a very popular park for runners, cyclists, and picnickers however I like to visit the park because of the heron rookery that is located on a small island in the river.

Each year, beginning about the middle of March, the great blue herons begin to return to the rookery. The herons that are the first to arrive have to be hardy, because at that point in time a lot of the ice is still covering the river. Those birds are rewarded by getting the first choice of nesting locations.

Since the trees do not usually leaf out until the end of April or the beginning of May it is quite easy to get good shots of the birds in their nest. However the pics that most photographers work for are flight shots of the birds as the travel to the from the nest performing their daily routine.

Even though they are large birds, averaging about three feet tall with a six foot wingspan, they can be very graceful. They are incredibly fun to watch as one minute they land with ballet style grace on a small twig at the top of the trees and the next minute they crash through the branches like a clown, their long legs tangling in the twigs.

Besides the herons there are often other birds on the river to photograph. A couple of years ago I was lucky and I had horned grebes in breeding plumage swimming by me as I photographed the herons. Most of the time though, the birds are a bit more common, such as Canada geese, mallards and wood ducks.

Fortunately there is also a very nice visitors center in the park. Built in 2002 it was named after State Senator Carl Kroenig who was instrumental in obtaining state support and funding for the park back in 1985. The visitors center has classrooms and displays to help educate people about the habitat and wildlife found in the park. It also has restrooms and heat which are very nice when you are photographing outside in Minnesota in the middle of March.

Lock and Dam No 1 (Ford Dam)

This summer I spent quite a bit of time at the Lock and Dam No. 1 which is located between St Paul and Minneapolis. Lock and Dam No 1 is the second lock located on the Mississippi River, the only one further upstream is the Lower St Anthony Falls Lock and Dam. It crosses the Mississippi just north of where it meets the Minnesota River. It is often referred to as the Ford Dam because of the adjacent Ford Plant.

The lock and damn was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers and went into operation in 1917. It was rebuilt in 1929 and expanded from one lock to two in 1932. Although they are not as large as some of the other locks down stream the two locks at the Ford Damn are large enough, 56 feet wide by 400 feet long to handle any river traffic that needs to get by, most of which are personal watercraft.

Between 1978 and 1983 major major renovations were made to the lock and dam. Most of the manual and hydraulic components were replaced with more modern components with computer controls. An observation area was added to allow visitors to view the operations of the lock during the warmer months of the year.
The dam is a buttress style dam made out of reinforced concrete. On the St Paul Side of the river stands a hydroelectric power station. The power station and dam were once owned by Ford and they were used to power the neighboring plant. With car companies running into financial problems Ford sold the dam and power station to Brookfield Power Co in 2007.

The reason that I first visited the dam was to photograph the banding of the peregrine falcon chicks that had hatched in the nest box that was attached to the dam walls on the Minneapolis side. The banding was done by the Midwest Peregrine Foundation, who are responsible for bringing the peregrine falcon species back from extinction in the Midwestern United States and southern Canada. Because the Midwest Peregrine Foundation has ties to The Raptor Center I found out about the banding and was able to get a front row seat.

After the peregrine chicks were banded I continued to visit the dam to check in and document their progress. Feeding three growing peregrines, one male and two females, can be a tough job, fortunately there was ample prey around the dam and the adults were very adapt at their hunting techniques. Once the chicks were old enough to thermal regulate their own body temperature the female joined the male in hunting which certainly made life easier.

Eventually it came time for the young to leave the nest. There were several ledges below the nest box that ran most of the length of the lock and served as a great place for the young to learn to fly. On these ledges they were protected from people and predators, except possibly other raptors, and their long lengths made them great runways for the chicks to practice their take offs and landings. I saw two of the young take what I believe was their first real flight.

Eventually the peregrines moved on. Even though they were probably still in the area it was no longer any easy way to find them or to take pics. There were other birds that were still hanging around though. For birds like double-crested cormorants, great egret and great blue heron the area around the damn is excellent habitat with plenty of fish to eat. Occasionally an eagle or osprey would stop by to do some fishing only to get chased away by angry peregrines.

Even with hungry peregrines in the area you can still find smaller birds raising their young. Perhaps the swallows that erected their nest beneath the stairs of the observation area were just too small to be worth the chase for the peregrines. Especially when their are numerous pigeons in the area which are not quite as quick or agile as the swallows and have a lot more meat on their bones.

I also managed to find dragonflies at the dam also. Cobra clubtails are usually found around large swift rivers and streams. The overflow water that pours over the dam makes the current a little faster in this area. Plus areas that are inhabited by humans often attract bugs, like flies, mosquitoes and bees which are prey to many dragonflies.

Great Blue Heron

The largest member of the heron family in North America is the great blue heron. These prehistoric looking birds have a wingspan of over six feet and weigh up to eight pounds. They can be found in or near fresh or salt water from northern Canada to northern South America.

Great blue herons are carnivorous. They hunt by stalking through the shallow water on their long legs, when they spot prey they lung forward and attempt to catch the prey with their bill. Prey consists mostly of fish but they will also eat reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates as well as small mammals and birds. Because they do not have the ability to tear their food apart the way that raptors do herons have been known on occasion to choke to death while trying to swallow large prey.

Sky Watch Friday: Great Blue Herons

One of my favorite signs of spring are when the great blue herons come back into the area and begin to nest. I am lucky because there is a small heron rookery located on an island in the North Mississippi Regional Park, which is not that far from where I work.
I began watching the heron rookery in about mid March this year and I have made several trips there since. On my first trip to the park in March I was able to stand on parts of the river, along the shore, that were still frozen. By the end of March all of the ice had melted and the Mississippi river had flooded its banks. This made it more difficult to get good pics because many of the locations that had the best view of the rookery were flooded out.

On my last visit, which was April 9th, the Mississippi had resided quite a bit and I was able to get some better pics. At this point most of the herons were paired up and going through the nesting rituals. Both of these pics are of male herons, who's job it is to go out and find sticks to bring back to the nest. He will then present them to the female, who stays at the nest, and she will use the sticks to remodel the nest.