Sunday's weather turned out to be great also. With all of the fun that Michelle and I had
photographing red-headed woodpeckers at
Necedah NWR on Saturday I decided to make another trek up north on Sunday to see if I could find one of the black-backed or three-toed that had been sighted over the past few weeks. I started my search up at
Stoney Point Dr, one of the locations where a lot of the woodpeckers have been seen. I saw a couple woodpeckers but they flew before I could get a good look at them. The black-capped chickadee where a
nother story. They were all around and they where not to camera shy.I did hear some
boreal chickadee but I never got a good look at any of them.
Next I moved on to Two Harbors. On my trip here earlier in the week, I did not have as much time as I wanted to spend checking out the woods near the light house. So I did some exploring. The first thing of interest that I found was a flock of
European starlings.
At first they where on the ground sifting through the grass but when I approached they took to the safety of the trees. I also saw quite a few black-capped chickadees here too.
The deer living around the lighthouse, and actually most of the ones that I saw in the area, where not very afraid of people. They have become habituated, which is not good. Many of these deer get hit by cars at dusk or dawn because they are not afraid to walk across roads, like they should be.
Finally I heard what I was listening for. Tap tap tap tap. I followed the noise and found the woodpecker that was making it, unfortunately it was a hairy and not a black-backed or three-toed.
I was getting kind of discouraged. I decided that I would head back to Stoney Point Dr. and try there again. On my way back to the car I came across a pair of snow bunting in the grass.
While I was driving back to
Stoney Point I passed a yard that had a tree that was full of berries and birds eating the berries. I was going a bit to fast to get a good enough look to ID the birds so I decided to turn around and go back so that I could take a better look.
What I saw was a small flock of pine grosbeak.
The tree, as I have since been informed, was
prolly a mountain ash. Pine grosbeak are
particularly fond of mountain ash berries.
I shot the grosbeak for a while then continued on through
Stoney Point. I never did find either of the woodpeckers that I had hoped to find but I did have a lot of fun and got some pretty good images to share with all of my friends on the web.
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.
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 
A while later the mosquitoes started to get fierce and the light got low so I packed it up and headed for home.
There were also some downy woodpeckers checking out the small trees that lined the field.
They liked to sing in a dead tree on the side of the trail.
The Minnesota River travels from the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge through the park and then connects to the Mississippi. The flood plain of the Minnesota River provides plenty of shallow water for long legged waders, like great egret and great blue heron, to hunt.
There are a lot of white tailed dear in Minnesota, even in the Twin City metro area, so photographing them is kind of like taking pictures of cowbirds or robins. 
I found a pair of muskrat working on building there home.
They kept going to a small island, in the pond that their home was located, digging up weeds and then dragging them through the water back to their home on the opposite bank. 
I also took a lot of pictures of butterfly and dragonfly but I will save them for my next post.