Wednesday was another beautiful day. Unfortunately I could not go out and shoot after work because I have been helping out at the
Raptor Center on Wednesdays after work. So I decided to run over to Lake Como over my lunch period and enjoy the weather rather then eat in front of my PC like I typically do. I started out by shooting some house sparrows that were foraging in the grass around the lake.
Then I moved to the lake where I was trying to get some shots of a few American coots. Unfortunately the coots were right in front of the sun making it very difficult to get any thing more then a silhouette. While I was waiting for the coots to move to a better angle I saw a large figure fly in low over the road and turn towards the gulf course. A tree was partially blocking y view but it looked like it was a bald eagle. It went low on to the golf course where I lost sight of it but since I did not see it fly back out I figured that it may still be close.
I left the coots and headed across the street to the golf course. There was a large group of Canadian geese, with a few mallards mixed in, making noise at a water hazard near to the road. I looked up and there was the eagle. I moved to the other side of the tree and got a couple of shots.
After a while the eagle got bored or annoyed by all of the geese below and he flew off across the golf course. While I was there I took a couple of shots of the male mallards, their heads almost glowing in the bright sunlight.
I did not get much of a chance to eat during lunch that day but it was by far the best lunch time that I have had at work in a while.
downy and hairy woodpeckers
and northern cardinals.
But in the last couple of weeks of February I started to notice some differences on my frequent trips to the Minnesota Valley NWR visitors center. There have been some changes and some new visitors to the feeding stations that they maintain there. One noticeable change is that the goldfinches are beginning to get there color back. Goldfinches molt twice a year, once in the winter, into the drab olive color and once in the spring into the brilliant lemon color that most people identify with goldfinch.
A new visitor to the feeders have been house finches. Originally house finches were a resident of the southwestern US and Mexico but in the 1940s they were introduced to the eastern US. Since then they have spread and are now year round residents for most of the US, including most of Minnesota. I have not seen many around this winter and I have not seen any at the MN Valley NWR this winter, until now. 
Anther year round resident that has been noticeably absent until recently have been house sparrows. House sparrows were introduced to North America from Europe in the 1800s.
The most exciting new visitor has been a fox sparrow.
While I remember some reports on the list servers back in December about a fox sparrow at the MN Valley NWR I have not seen any in my many trips here. 
Fox sparrows are birds that we usually only see during migration. There wintering grounds are in the southeastern US where there is less snow making ground foraging easier. Their summer breeding territory is in the western US, northern Canada and Alaska. Spotting a migrating fox sparrow is usually a good sign that the spring migration has begun. Let's hope so, we can certainly use a bit of spring up here in the frozen north.
