Prairie Wetlands Learning Center

On my way back home from the Detroit Lakes Festival of Birds I decided to make a stop at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center located near Fergus Falls, MN. I had the option to visit the center on one of the festival field trips but I choose Itasca and Tamarac instead because the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center was an easy stop on my way home.

The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center is the first residential environmental center operated by the U.S. fish and wildlife service. It began as a grass roots effort back in the 1970's to establish a public use facility focusing on prairies and wetlands. A local group calling themselves "The Friends of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center," formed in 1989 and through private donations and grants they were able to open the center in 1994. The facility was expanded to include a dormitory and visitors center in 1998 and an education wing in 2008.

The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center is located on the Townsend Waterfowl Production Area, a 330 acre tract of land consisting of native and restored prairie, 28 wetlands and an oak savanna. There have been over 180 different species of birds that have been identified on the center grounds. With the abundance of prairie habitat it is no surprise that many different types of sparrows can be found there.

I have to confess that I have a difficult time identifying sparrows, right up there with gulls and darner dragonflies, so if I have misidentified any of these sparrows please let me know. I believe that the first sparrow, 2 pictures above, is a white-crowned sparrow, the one directly above is a clay colored sparrow and the one below is a song sparrow.

One of these days I am going to have to take the sparrow workshop that Doug Buri and Bob Janssen put on out in western South Dakota. I took their shorebird workshop back in 2008 but have not had the time to get out to take the sparrow workshop in October. Last year they identified 14 different species during the three day workshop. If you are interested in this workshop here is the address where you can find more information.

Besides sparrows there were other birds like this eastern bluebird. Bluebirds seem to be more common these days. That is just my unscientific observation.

Another cool bird that I was able to photograph were purple martins. I have seen purple martin gourds at several different locations but usually there have not been any purple martins. At this locations there seem to be a healthy population.

Besides the prairies the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center also has wetland areas. Around the wetlands I found quite a bit of bird life, such as Canada geese, mallards, American coot, as well as redwing and yellowheaded blackbirds.

While I was on my way back to the car everything went quiet. All of the small birds seemed to just disappear leaving me with just the Canada geese and mallards. A shadow crossed over head and I looked up to see a coopers hawk crossing the sky in search of prey. Since the geese were a little much for a coopers hawk it continued on its way.

Birding in Fort Snelling State Park

Today we begin the trip home. I always get sad to leave here and go back to the real world, but we have a lot of great pictures. This is probably our most productive trip to Yellowstone. We saw almost everything that there was to see. We had 3 wolf sightings this year, which was great because we have never seen wolves in the park before. We got some pics of a prairie falcon, which was a life bird for me. We also got some good badger shots and golden eagle shots. We had seen both in the park on past trips but we were able to get better pics this time. Yesterdays weather actually cleared up quite a bit, despite what the weather people forecasted, and we were fortunate to see an elk calf that had been born only 30 minutes before we photographed it. We also got a lot of great bird pics including mountain bluebird, raven, white-crowned sparrow, common merganser, buffelhead, Barrow's goldeneye, eared grebe, kestrel, grouse and a few more.

We did not get back until late yesterday and we are trying to leave soon so I did not have time to get any more Yellowstone pics ready, but I do have some more passerines that I photographed at Fort Snelling State Park on May 12th.

song sparrow
white-throated sparrow
gray catbird
yellow-rumped warbler Myrtle variety

blackburnian warbler

I will have a lot of pics to share when I get home but I may not be able to post for the next couple of days while we are driving. If I am not able to post I hope that everyone has a happy Memorial Day.

Nature Abounds at Dodge Nature Center

I did find some other wildlife, beside the green darner dragonfly which I posted yesterday, at Dodge Nature Center on April 21st.
The painted turtles were out sunning themselves on the rocks and logs in the ponds, at least until the sky clouded up.
Song sparrows were out singing, as they have been for several weeks now.
One species that has recently returned and that I have been seeing a lot of are white-throated sparrows.
The young muskrats were out with the adults that afternoon. I did not get a very good look at them. They were good at keeping hidden in the reeds. When they did have to travel across an open space they darted very quickly, they were so fast that it was impossible to catch more then a quick glance let alone get a pick. The best look that I got was what you see above. I may not have been able to see them but it was easy to tell where they were because they were very vocal, squeaking and rustling through the dried reeds.

Birding the North Mississippi Regional Park

I did see, and photograph, a few other birds besides the horned grebes and great blue herons when I visited the North Mississippi Regional Park on April 14th.
I spotted a couple of American black ducks. I don't see black ducks all that often. That may be because Minnesota is pretty much on the western edge of there range.
There is some hybridization and interbreeding between American black ducks and mallards.
Not all of the action was down on the river. In the wooded area of the park I found an American robin.There were still American tree sparrows around.

As well as song sparrows.
I also spotted a group of 4 northern flickers. They would fly down to the open field land for a few minutes and then would fly back to the trees. I am guessing that they were hunting for insects. Unlike other members of the woodpecker family northern flickers prefer to find insects on the ground, ants are their favorite prey.

Another difference between northern flickers and their woodpecker cousins is that northern flickers are more migratory. Many northern flickers from Alaska, Canada and the northern US migrate down to Texas, California, or Mexico for the winter.
That is probably the reason why we don't see many flickers during the winter time, these were the first ones that I spotted in 2008, here in Minnesota. while the downy, hairy and red-breasted woodpeckers are knocking on trees in the snow and freezing temps the northern flickers are down in the sun slurping up ants.

Kinglets, Sparrows, Eagles and Osprey

Although my trip out on Sunday was primarily to photograph migrating waterfowl I did also manage to find a large number of new passerines as well as a couple of raptors.
Kinglets are always pretty difficult to photograph, but I followed this golden-crowned kinglet around the Old Cedar Ave Bridge area for a while and was able to get a couple of good pics.
I did see ruby-crowned kinglets at Black Dog Lake and Old Cedar Ave Bridge that day also but all of my photos of them turned out to be like Big Foot pics, blurry and indistinguishable.
The song sparrows were out singing in the fields around Black Dog that morning. The males sing as a way to attract a female, as well as to warn other males to stay out of their territory.
The lenghtening days, as well as warming temps and food availability, determine when the males begin to sing their courting songs. Studies show that females prefer mates that sing a more complex song. If that was the case with humans then classical and opera singers would be studs while boy bands would be duds, well at least half of that statement is true.
While reading up about song sparrows I found that the song sparrows in the Aleutian island in Alaska are so large that they are actually twice the weight of an eastern bluebird. Talk about a raptors extra value meal.

Speaking of raptors I did see my first osprey of 2008 on Sunday. I was just a fly by, so I did not get any great pics, but it was still a welcome sight. I will need to make sure that I start checking out the osprey platform in Roseville to see if any osprey are nesting there again this year.
I also found a bald eagle perched in one of the large trees on the shore of the river. It is possible that it could be an inhabitant of the nest across the river channel, that is visible from the road. Several people who I ran into at Black Dog and Old Cedar Ave where down there looking for eagles because of a feature that one of the local stations ran on their news program about eagles at Black Dog Lake. I let the people who I talked to know that there was at least one eagle still around as well as a nest but that the best time for eagle viewing at Black Dog Lake is actually during the winter months. Since Black Dog is one of a few locations where the water does not freeze over, due to the power plant on the lake, eagles congregate there during the winter. When the temps warm up and our 10,000 + lakes thaw out the eagles disperse leaving only a few behind.

Playing hooky at Wood Lake Nature Center

On Saturday October 13th I participated in the Upper Midwest Audubon Conference in Bloomington, MN. I arrived at the conference at around 8:00am and after registration and the welcome I went to a very interesting program session entitled The Great Northern Owl Irruption of 2005. Having photographed many great gray and northern hawk owls during the irruption I was very interested in hearing the speaker, Dave Grosshuesch, talk about his research on the phenomenon. It was very interesting and it left me looking forward to the next northern owl irruption whenever that may be.

The second program session that I went to was not very exciting and it was all that I could do to keep from falling asleep. As soon as it ended I went outside to check the weather. As the weather man promised the clouds had left, the skies had cleared and the sun was shining. This was the first nice day in a week and I was going to be in the conference all day. I was scheduled for a field trip to the Bass Ponds at 2pm but I could not wait that long to get outside. So I took my camera and headed over to Wood Lake Nature Center, which was right down the road. I figured that I would skip one session then head back for lunch but sometimes plans just don't work out, especially when out shooting on a beautiful day.

When I first arrived, at Wood Lake, I checked the small trees down by the dock near the visitors center. These trees always have a lot of small birds to photograph and this Saturday things were no different. The first thing that I spotted were a few song sparrows in the brush next to the trees.Up in the trees there where northern cardinals.
The male looked like he had completed his molting.

The female looked like she was still missing some feathers around her face.

I also spotted some ruby-crowned kinglets. This one almost came right down to me. He got real close and flashed me his crown, unfortunately I was not fast enough to get that shot but I did get him a bit further up. I also caught this american goldfinch. The ruffled feathers kind of threw me off and I thought that it was a yellow-rumped warbler at first, but a helpful reader pointed out my error and when I looked at it closely I can see that it's beak looks too wide for a warbler.I guess I am not the only one who likes a good bath. Out on the trails I spotted a white-throated sparrow. The last one of these that I saw was in Duluth three weeks earlier.I also spotted a fox sparrow out on the trails. This was the first one of these that I have seen so far this fall.Even though it is already mid October there were quite a few insects around, like this autumn meadowhawk.George Bush finally admitted that there is such a thing as global climate change so I guess now it is real and the dragonflies can hang out here into winter. LOLThere were a few waterfowl out too. American coots have been moving through the area in the past week or so. I saw about 20 coots through out the park.I also got some shots of the pied-billed grebes that have been hanging around for about a month.

By the time I got through the park the lunch time for the convention was already half way over. So I decided to eat the food that I had with me instead. On my way back to the convention I took a wrong turn on 494 and somehow ended up at the Bass Ponds.

Sparrows, woodpeckers and bluebirds at Wood Lake Nature Center

It was still light out when I left Minnesota River Valley NWR on Saturday the 6th so I decided to run over to Wood Lake Nature Center to see what was going on over there. I started out by checking by the visitors center where I spotted a few song sparrows.
Then I went out on the paths and walked my typical figure eight. On the south side of the park I got a nice view of a woodpecker. I identified it as a hairy woodpecker because I did not see any white spots on the tail like a downy would have.On the west side of the park I found another banded woolly bear caterpillar looking for a place to hibernate. Maybe all of the woolly bear caterpillars that I have been seeing lately are a sign that winter will be here soon. There are people who use woolly bear caterpillars to forecast the weather. Can you imagine your TV weather man bringing up images of woolly bears instead of Doppler Radar?

I also got some nice shots of an eastern bluebird. Unfortunately I was trying to get a bit closer and two walkers passed me by and flush the bird. A while later the mosquitoes started to get fierce and the light got low so I packed it up and headed for home.