Birding Woodlake

On Sunday the 13th I made one last stop and that was at Wood Lake Nature Center. That was were I spotted my first warbler of the year, a yellow-rumped warbler, but there were quite a few other birds there to photograph.
The Canadian geese have begun to nest and I counted at least about 10 that I saw at Wood Lake.
While the female are sitting on the nest, I assume that they are incubating eggs, the males walk the perimeter and keep guard. That occasionally leads to conflicts between geese and visitors. Usually it is nothing more then a bunch of hissing though. Some of the males are a bit more mellow and keep a watch from the water.

There were also a lot of gulls lie this ring-billed gull on the ice. My guess is that they are looking for fish that died during the winter and are surfacing as the ice melts. This makes for an easy meal. I have been back to Wood Lake since that weekend and all the ice has disappeared and so have most of the gulls.
A great egret was prowling the reeds looking to catch its own meal.
While walking the trail I spooked a pair of wood ducks who we in the reeds next to the trail. They flew off before I could get a shot but I found them later in the safety of deeper water and got a pic of the male.
The birds that I was the most excited about, besides the warbler was a pair of hooded mergansers.

The male hoody was swimming around like a king displaying his majestic crown.
The female did not want to be undone so she tried to display her tiara but it just came out looking like she was having a bad hair day.
The low part of the trip was when I spotted this squirrel by the feeders near the visitors center. At first i was not sure what it was, since it was missing a big chunk of fur and most of its tail. I am not sure what happened to it. Maybe it ran into a predator like a red-tail hawk, great horned owl or a fox, all of them are local to the Wood Lake area. Maybe the issue was with another squirrel. I am sure that I will never know the reason for his injuries I just know that he is lucky to be alive. I really don't think that he would make it with out food from the feeders at the visitors center. With out his tail I am sure that he is lacking some balance and may have a hard time navigating his way through the trees the way that squirrels normally do.

Bass Ponds

After birding Black Dog Lake and Old Cedar Avenue Bridge last weekend I moved on to check out the Bass Ponds. Normally I would have kept my truck at the Old Cedar Ave Bridge parking lot and just walked to the bass Ponds from there, both are part of the same unit of the Minnesota valley NWR, but they currently have the path that connects them closed, due to construction. There is a pond that is between the bridge and the bass Ponds that is a holding pond for the city of Bloomington. They decided to enlarge it earlier this year. It was supposed to be completed by March 15th but here it is after April 15th and it is still closed. which is really depressing because that area was always good for finding butterflies and dragonflies and if it is not done soon I think that it will be pretty empty this year.
Down in the trees that line the path that over looks the river overflow I did manage to find an eastern phoebe.
Usually phoebes dart around in the trees and are difficult to photograph but this one was a bit more cooperative and perched in a small tree on the side of one of the open ponds.
In the marshy area, just below the hill that leads to the parking lot, there was a northern shoveler out sifting for food in the shallow waters.
In the small pond that is filled by a run off pipe, a great blue heron was fishing for its breakfast.
Fortunately it would not be going hungry that morning.
I was hoping that I could photograph it getting another fish but then some dog walkers came down the path towards it and it flushed. That morning I also saw some great egrets, mallards, Canadian geese, trumpeter swans, and kinglets and the Bass Ponds.

Female Belted Kingfisher

One of the treats from last Sunday were the belted kingfishers. I found what I believe is two different females around Black Dog Lake.

The first one I found was down at the west channel to the river. I believe that this is the same one that John Mikes, over at Weekend Shooter, photographed a few times in that location this winter.
She perched in several different locations around the west channel, often taking off just as I got the lens on her. After following her around the channel a bit I got a couple of shots and then drove back down Black Dog Road towards the east.
When I went around the east side of the lake I spotted another female belted kingfisher in the marshy area that is part of Fort Snelling State park.
This is the same location that I photographed a pair of kingfishers a couple of weeks ago.
It is possible that this could be the same bird that I spotted at the west channel, I did stop for a few minutes on my way down Black Dog Road to check out some other birds. So there was time enough for the bird to fly down to the opposite side of the lake but I believe that it is actually another bird who has a territory in the marsh.

While I was watching her an older couple who were new to birding stopped to see what I was looking at and so I pointed her out. We watched as she shifted between a couple of different perches and I talked to them about the different birds that were in the marsh.
I continued to watch and photograph her even after the couple left. Just as I was about to pack up she flew down into the marsh and pulled up a fish.
She moved too quickly for me to get the shot of her diving into the water but i was able to click of a few of her enjoying her prize.
You can see that when she catches the fish it is at a 90 degree angle to her beak. It would be very hard for her to swallow it that way, remember birds do not have teeth so they usually have to swallow there prey.
So she would toss the fish in the air and try and catch it in her beak so that the fish was perpendicular and she would be able to swallow it. Sometimes she would have to through it up more then one because she did not catch it properly the first time.

She caught 3 fish while I watched that afternoon. I ended up spending over an hour there and shooting out most of the rest of my 8gb memory card.
When I left she was still perched in what looked to be her favorite snag. There was no sign of the male that I had seen with her the last time that I photographed them. Since this is one of the better birding sights that is close to my house I will undoubtedly return and helpfully get more great kingfisher pics.

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.

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.

My First Warbler of 2008

This week it looks like the weather here has finally changed, hopefully for good, away from winter. Sunday it was still a bit brisk, but with the sun shining for much of the day the temps managed to get quite comfortable. I spent about 9 hours outside birding since the weather was so nice. I started out at Black Dog Lake, then moved across the river to the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge, then up the river to the Bass Ponds and then over to Wood Lake Nature Center. It was a very good day for birding and I got some got shots. I also saw a few firsts of the year for 2008. The most exciting of these was my first warbler of the year.
When we start to see warblers, here in Minnesota, then we know that spring is finally here. My first warbler of 2008 was the yellow-rumped warbler, which is probably the most common warbler that we see around here.
I spotted it at Wood Lake Nature Center in an area that I usually call Warbler Woods. This is a small wooded area that borders on their grassland area and it is usually the best place at Wood Lake to look for warblers.
The yellow-rumped warbler is the only warbler able to digest the waxes found in certain types of berries, such as wax myrtles and bayberries. This allows the yellow-rumped to winter further north then other warblers. It is probably also the reason why it is typically the last warbler that I see in the fall and the first warbler that I see in the spring time here in Minnesota.

Minnesota Valley NWR Visitors Center

Even though the weather was pretty bad last Friday I decided to do a bit of birding after work anyway. It had been raining or snowing all week and besides for a quick trip Wednesday after my shift at The Raptor Center I had been cooped up all week. Since it was still raining or sleeting or raining some more, I decided to go over to the Minnesota Valley NWR visitors center wher I could shoot pictures of birds at the feeders from inside instead of running around and getting my camera all wet.
It was pretty busy at the feeders but the low light made taking pictures difficult. Instead of taking pictures of many of the same types of birds that I have been photographing all winter long only in ugly gray light I decided to mostly just watch the action.
There where a couple of types of birds that I have not had the opportunity to shoot to much so far this year that I did take a couple of shots of like the male and female house finchs above.
There are also quite a few fox sparrows around right now. It is fun to watch them dig up old leaves and ground looking for burried treasure. Hmmmm I wonder if Jack Sparrow was a fox sparrow.

A Visit to Dodge Nature Center

Last Wednesday the sky cleared up for a little bit in the evening, unfortunately I was not able to go out and do some major birding because Wednesday afternoon is my volunteer shift at The Raptor Center but since it was the only time that we really got sun during that week I decided to stop at the Dodge Nature Center on my way home from The Raptor Center. Since I did not have too much time, it was already 6pm when I arrived, I decided to make a quick loop first over to the farm pond, then past the crossroads pond, then the prairie pond and then back to the parking lot.
The most interesting thing that I found was a hermit thrush in the wooded marshy area that leads to the farm pond.

There were also quite a few gold-crowned kinglets flitting about
Most of the kinglets were in the small picnic type area right next to the parking lot.
Kinglets are very small and frequently moving, which makes them especially difficult to photograph. Since they are very small the camera autofocus has a problem picking them out quick enough before they move so all of these picture, like a majority of the pictures that I shoot these days, were taken using manual focus.
The ponds were still mostly frozen but there were a few geese, muskrats, and mallards near the edges of the ponds where there was a bit of open water.
On my way out I spotted a couple of white tailed deer. There are a lot of white tailed deer in Minnesota, even in the Twin Cities. So when it starts to get dark it is pretty easy to find a few in most of the neighborhood parks or nature centers.