Bowdoin NWR Waterfowl

We arrived at Bowdoin NWR at around 10:30 am. Even though this was our first visit to the refuge we could tell that, like Medicine Lake, it was suffering from a shortage of water. At one point when I was trying to get a bit closer to get a better shot I found myself standing on a bed of silt that should have been part of the lake bottom.

Even with the lower water levels we still found a few waterfowl and shorebirds around.

Lesser scaup
northern shoveler
eared grebe

We were quite happy to see some eared grebe in breeding plumage in pools that were close to the road. The eared grebes where one of the main reasons that we planned our visit to Medicine Lake. When we did not get great looks at Medicine Lake we were kind of disappointed but photographing them at Bowdoin made up for it. I saw quite a few horned grebes, in breeding plumage, as they passed through this year but the eared grebe are usually pretty scarce in Minnesota.

Redhead, Scaup, Grebes, Flickers and Mergansers

I did also find some birds at Fort Snelling State Park on April 20th.
I have seen quite a few northern flickers around lately. Since they are pretty migratory it is possible that many of the birds that I have been seeing are on their way up to summer nesting grounds up in Canada. All of the flickers that I have seen are yellow-shafted northern flickers. The red-shafted northern flicker has a more westerly range. Perhaps I will get some pictures of a red-shafted when we travel to Yellowstone later this year.
Male redhead ducks are aptly named and easily identified, especially in breeding plumage. After the mating season is complete the males fly to large lakes, typically further north, where they group together. At that point they go through a molt which leaves them flightless for about a month. After the molt they appear pretty much brown all over but still maintain a red tinge on their heads.
Unlike its cousin, the greater scaup, the lesser scaup can only be found in North America. It is difficult to tell the two apart unless you have them right next to each other for comparison. However since the lesser scaup prefers fresh water, while the greater prefers saltwater, most of the scaups that we see here are lessers. From what I have read the best trait to use to identify whether you are looking at a greater or lesser scaup is the shape of the head. Lesser scaups have a thinner more rounded head then the greater do. My guess is that this was a lesser.
The horned grebes have been out in full force lately. Maybe it is just me, but it seems as though there are more horned grebes around this spring then normal.A group of grebes, like the one pictured above, is not called a flock or a kettle it would be called " a water dance of grebes"

Another grebe that I spotted for the first time this year is the pied-billed grebe. Typically I have seen more pied grebes, around home, then any of the other types, but this year I have seen a lot more horned then I have pied.
Another bird that seems to be more numerous this year, at least where I live, are the red-breasted mergansers.
These birds are coming from winter grounds on the east or west coast of North America, as far south as Mexico, and are heading to their breeding grounds in the Arctic and Subarctic regions of Alaska and Canada.

Migrating Waterfowl at Black Dog Lake

My birding expedition on Sunday began at Black Dog Lake. Much of Black Dog Lake does not freeze during the winter, due to the Excel Energy Plant that is located there, so while many other large lakes still had a lot of ice on them Black Dog was primarily ice free. This makes it one of the best spots around to see migrating waterfowl and this Sunday did not disappoint.
There were of course the usual mallard ducks out dabbling in the shallow waters.

They were joined by lesser scaups.
There were also a few pair of blue-winged teal.
The teal were located in the marsh that is east of the lake and actually a part of Fort Snelling State Park. This area has become a very good wetland area due mainly to beaver activity. I am going to try and get some beaver photos this weekend so that I can do a post on them. Since beavers work mainly at night it may be a challenge but I think that it will be worth it.
On the east channel to the river there were a couple of northern shovelers.
As I walked on the path that run along the lake from the east channel I startled a hooded merganser who swam away from shore with his hood in full display.

After I finished at Black Dog I crossed the river to check out the waterfowl at the old Cedar Ave Bridge. From the observation deck that goes out a little way over the overflow area of the Minnesota River I spotted quite a few ducks and mergansers but most were too far away to get any good pics. One exception was a group of white pelicans that had stopped over to rest on a shallow part of the river.

The shallow spot which they were roosting on was not that far from the observation deck so I was able to get some pics. Notice the notch on the beak which is an indication that it is the breeding season.

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.

Christmas Eve Birding

The snow that was predicted for Saturday the 22nd came a day late. This was nice since our Red Wing CBC was spared the snow, except for the small amount of wet sloppy snow that fell in the morning. I had hoped to go out and do some birding on Sunday morning before going to my in laws to celebrate the holidays, but unfortunately the weather changed my plans. Not that it was really that bad. A little wind and around 3" of snow might close down a place like Washington DC but for Minnesota that is pretty mild. Unfortunately clouding skies usually don't yield great pictures and snow can really mess up expensive camera equipment, so I decided to stay home and wrap some gifts.

The holiday at the in laws was pretty normal. My wife got me some snow shoes, which I hope to get out and use this weekend. The next morning the clouds had cleared out and the sun was shining so I headed out early in the morning to Douglas Point in Hastings, MN. My wife and I had discussed going to a movie that afternoon so I knew I did not have a lot of time but I wanted to see if I could find the harlequin duck, that I had seen the week before, and a Barrow's goldeneye that had been reported in the area.

When I arrived at Douglas Point there was already a couple birders there looking over the large grouping of birds that were on the edge of the ice.
The group mostly consisted of Canadian geese, common golden eye, and common merganser.
Most of the Canadian geese were all still resting with their heads tucked in close to their bodies to conserve heat. Mixed in with the geese were 8 to 10 trumpeter swans still hanging around. I began to search through the flocks of goldeneye looking for different patterns that would indicate a Barrow's goldeneye or a harlequin.I spotted some mallards and some lesser scaup mixed in with the othersThere were also some American Coots, ring-billed ducks, canvasbacks and redhead ducks mixed in but I still did not find the birds that I was looking for.

I decided to try and look a bit down river so I crossed the bridge into Wisconsin. From the Wisconsin side of the river, near one of the boat launches in Prescott, WI I saw more common goldeneye as well as more mallards but no Barrow's or Harle. I continued down the river to the Great River Road Visitors Center that sits on the bluffs overlooking the river in Prescott.

The visitors center was closed but there were still quite a few birds around to look at. On the visitors center grounds I saw a white-bellied nuthatch as well as a red-bellied woodpecker. At the houses behind the visitors center there was a blue jay. With my red white and blue birds all in line it was probably no coincidence to see a bald eagle in a large tree on the rivers edge. Unfortunately he was facing the other way so I decided not to take a picture of the back of his head.

I still had not seen either of the birds that I was hoping for so I decided to go back up to Douglas Point and try one more time before I left. While I was there scanning the flocks one more time with my binos, Milt Bloomberg, one of the two birders that I had talked with earlier, stopped by and told me he had located the harlequin over by the boat launch in Prescott. I followed Milt back over to the spot where he had spotted the bird but by the time that we arrived the bird had already moved on. Milt had to take off, he was doing some quick birding while visiting from St Cloud for the holidays, but I was happy he got to see the bird. I stayed a bit longer but was unable to relocate the harlequin.

Later that afternoon while I was watching a movie, around 2:30, Jim Ryan located the duck, back around the same location where Milt had spotted it. I was a bit disappointed that I missed it, but I was not too upset. I had already seen the duck the week before and added it to my life list. It was cool that Milt, who had never seen one in Minnesota, and Jim, who added it to his life list, got to see it that day. I also recieved word today that John from Kansas, who was at Douglas Point with Milt when I arrived in the morning, got an opportunity to see the duck on the 27th.

The last stop in my Duluth adventure

My last stop on my Duluth tour, on Thursday, was Two Harbors. By the time I arrived it was after 4:00pm so I did not have much time. It would be dark soon and I still had to drive for about 3 hours to get home. In the harbor I spotted two ducks. The first one was a bufflehead.
Buffleheads are very colorful when the light hits them just right. The only buffleheads that I have photographed in the past were a pair at the Bosque del Apache last winter, so it was kind of cool to see one in northern Minnesota.
The other duck in the harbor was a scaup. I think that it was a greater scaup because it was much larger then the bufflehead and it had a very thick beak.
On the shore a pair of snow bunting were foraging in the grass.

Then I decided to take a few minutes to check out the woods by the light house. I saw a few dark-eyed juncos, white tailed dear, and a downy woodpecker, who appeared to be molting or at least he had a few feathers out of place.I wish I would have had more time to check out the north shore but the sun was setting so I knew that I would have to plan another trip if I wanted to do more north shore birding. So I packed up my equipment, stopped for gas on the way out of town and began the trip home.

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.