Checking out the Survey Route

To maintain my active volunteer Master Naturalist status, 8 hours of continuing education and 40 hours of volunteer activity must be logged for each calendar year.  Last week, my sister notified me of a Frog & Toad Survey project coming up this spring/summer and the Minnesota DNR was looking for volunteers to work on this project.  I was definitely interested and checked out their website to apply for a route.  Fortunately, there was a route available in rural Fillmore County, not too far from where I grew up.  I sent in my application and found out late last week that I had been accepted for this route.  Hooray!  Since the monitoring has to be done after dark and the roads are all mostly unmarked and in a totally rural area, my sissy thought it would be a good idea for us to check out the route in the daylight.  I agreed, mainly because this could also be turned into a birding trip!  Mom was supposed to go along with us, but wasn't feeling well today, so Mr. Johnson & Holly went instead. 

Here you go Mom -- a look at some of the sightings you missed.  We'll take the drive again someday soon when you're feeling better.....

There were still some winter birds hanging around.  We saw plenty of juncos and this nice horned lark who posed very nicely for us in the middle of the road.

 

A big surprise for me was finding the Minnesota Karst Preserve!  I had read about this cave and knew it was in Fillmore County, but had never taken the time to find it.  If you're a caver, or have any interest in caving at all, you will want to read the book "Opening Goliath" which takes place at this very site in Southeastern Minnesota.

While we were at the intersection of the Minnesota Karst Preserver and the turn to our next survey spot, Mr. Johnson spotted this large bird in the trees just ahead.  Could it be a Red-Tailed Hawk?

Yes, indeed!  Right on cue, this beautiful raptor made its distinctive "keeeyahh" call and took off from its perch so I started snapping pictures.  I especially love being able to capture these "in flight" shots!

There used to be a farmstead here, all that remains is the foundation of a barn and this windmill.

We drove through all types of habitat on this route -- tilled farmland, grasslands, and even some woods.  My observant sissy spotted this deer in the woods.  She's got good eyes, until this deer moved, it had blended in so well, I almost missed it.

In another tree near an old cemetery, a Rough Legged Hawk was perched.  Of course it decided to fly away as soon as the car slowed down, but I still managed to snap a few photos -- here's the best one.

The end of our survey route was pretty close to Preston, so we stopped for an early supper at our favorite restaurant, The Branding Iron.  We had a really fun afternoon and were glad that we took the time to explore this route in the light of day because it's going to be a little tougher in the darkness of this totally rural area.  We thought our adventures were done for the day and my camera and binoculars were already stowed away in the trunk, but on our drive home, Mr. Johnson spotted something in the ditch.  We stopped the car so I could get the camera out and then turned around to see if I could get photos of this last and best sighting of the day.

There it is!  Can you see that big dark spot in the ditch?  A Turkey Vulture feasting on a dead deer!

Aw cool!  Of course, it didn't want to stick around with a car driving past slowly.

By this time I had my car window rolled down and I was halfway out the window snapping pictures as fast as my camera could go.

Because you see, it's not very often you get the chance to photograph a Turkey Vulture up close, and certainly not with the sunset shining through its wings!

I know some people think they're ugly and horrible birds, but I also know for a fact that there are many of us who think they're fascinating and beautiful birds. 

What an awesome way to end a very special birding adventure with my loved ones. 



Late Winter Birding Drive

After what seemed to be a fairly mild winter earlier in the season, February and March have decided to make up for the winter snows and  weather we didn't receive in December & January.  The winter blues are really starting to set in so a couple weeks ago, we decided to take advantage of a sunny Sunday afternoon to go for a birding drive (with a stop at the yarn store, of course).  It's a good thing my favorite yarn store is in Winona & right on the Mississippi River as that gives us a good excuse to take my favorite birding drive through the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area for waterfowl viewing and then up the river road on the way home for eagle watching.  Here are some of the pictorial highlights from our Sunday afternoon drive......

A pair of Tundra Swans have spent the winter again in the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area. They were in exactly the same area as last winter.  Pretty cool!

There were some ducks in this little patch of open water also.  I was excited to see this Northern Pintail as it's been quite a few years since I've seen one.

Driving along the Whitewater River I saw these tracks along the riverbank.  I was thinking they were probably made by otters.  What do you think?

As we were driving past this one little patch of open water, I was scanning for waterfowl when something dark caught my eye in the ditch.  "Back up," I ordered Mr. Johnson.  As we were backing up, I got my camera ready and started snapping pictures as soon as we got past this little critter.  Once I got home and started editing the photos, I was able to ID this furry little creature as a Mink.  Woo-Hoo!  I've never seen one in the wild before and felt extremely fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.

Farther down the road we spotted a large hawk perched in the top of a tree, thinking it was maybe another of the numerous red-tails we'd been seeing all afternoon, I got out of the car and started walking towards the tree with my camera ready for a possible flight shot.  The raptor didn't disappoint me.  I was even happier when I was reviewing my shots and found out this wasn't a red-tailed hawk at all, but a Rough-Legged Hawk who only visits Minnesota in the winter!

Down in Winona, there was a small patch of open water on one of their lakes going in to town.  We stopped there to see if there might be any interesting waterfowl besides the usual mallards and Giant Canada Geese and there was!  Here are several nice Canvasbacks, plus a Lesser Scaup.

I was really surprised to see a Coot hanging out with these ducks too.  Then I read a birding report later in the week indicating that some of these ducks are already starting their spring migration.  I'm glad they decided to hang out at this nice spot in Winona on the day of my visit!

There were even some pretty interesting looking mallards mixed with the regular ones.  Obvious there's been some duck hanky-panky going on here!

The mallard hen seemed pretty happy with her dapper looking, multi-colored mate.  And I was happy with how nicely they posed for my camera!

It was getting late in the afternoon and close to sundown by the time we finally started up the river road towards home, so the light wasn't the best for pictures anymore, but I did manage to get this one shot of an eagle fishing for its supper in the Mississippi.  There were so many eagles in this area, but most of them were hanging out on the ice at the far side of the open water, and beyond the adequate focus reach of my 300 mm camera lens.

Train tracks also run parallel to the river road, and we usually see at least one train.  This day's train was a long one and the engines were working pretty hard to get all the cars up this gradual incline. 

And of course, Holly had a great time.  Even though the temps were only in the 20s, we were going slow enough that she was able to have her head out the window.  She loves the wind in her face and being able to smell all the wild things outside.

I see by my ticker at the top of this blog that there's only a few days until the first day of spring.  Hard to believe it this year, especially with the 20+ inches of snow we've already received in March and much more predicted for the next week.  I'll be very happy when spring weather and birds finally arrive this year!

A good bird sighting!

Now that the weather's nice & it stays light later in the evening, we usually take Holly for a walk up the street after supper.  Tonite we saw this little white bird in the front yard of one of our neighbors.  I thought it might have been a goldfinch, but of course, I didn't have binocs or camera along to make a positive ID.

We hurried home so I could grab my camera and binocs all the while hoping that this bird would still be there......and after a few anxious minutes, it showed up again!

I was still thinking it was a goldfinch, until her amorous mate showed up -- a handsome Chipping Sparrow.  Mystery solved!  We watched the two of them fly down to the lawn, pick up some grasses and fly over to a small evergreen shrub right by the neighbor's house. 

It was so amazing to see this special little sparrow.  I'm not sure if it would be categorized as leucistic or partially albinistic.  I'll share these photos with some real "bird experts" I know and see what they have to say.

I hope we get additional chances to see this bird and that it raises a nice little family, although walking back home, we saw 3 homeowners on this same street all outside spraying toxic chemicals on their lawns.  :-( 
I wish I could invite this Chipping Sparrow couple over to my yard where I know it's safe.......

Early Spring Birding

It looks and sounds like spring has certainly arrived early in Minnesota this year -- after a record-breaking mild winter. We took advantage of nice weather the past two Sundays to drive around southeastern Minnesota and see what kinds of early migrants we could spot. Last Sunday, we were super fortunate to find this beautiful Bald Eagle perched in a tree right along the Mississippi River near downtown Wabasha. I was able to get out of the car and walk right up to this magnificent raptor and he didn't even budge. How lucky was that?

(Sorry, I love this eagle photo so much, I'm making you look at it in another blog post!)

Driving through the Whitewater State Park Wildlife Management Area, I also spotted the first Killdeer of 2012. Glancing down along the river bank, at first I thought this was a bit of trash, but when we stopped and got binocs on it, we could definitely see that it was a shorebird of some kind. A quick glance in the field guide confirmed Killdeer by the two dark breast bands.

This afternoon, we loaded Holly up in the car to drive around the Rochester area and see what we could find. We managed to finally see our first wild turkeys of 2012 and also several Eastern Bluebirds who declined to be photographed. We again saw several Bald Eagles and I managed to get one decent shot during a fly-over. I never get tired of seeing these raptors flying around.
The warm weather and strong southerly winds of the past few days have helped get lots of the ice out on ponds and lakes in the area. We headed out to the landfill reservoir west of Rochester where we had found some good waterfowl last year. It was a wise choice again this spring. As we were walking up to the reservoir, we could see plenty of waterfowl flying in to land. Check it out! These are mostly Greater White-Fronted Geese with a few Snow Geese in the mix too.

Here's some more! The ice was mostly out on this reservoir, at least all around the edges. There was still some in the middle and many of these geese (including some of Rochester's Giant Canada Geese) were just hanging out on the ice.

Before heading for home, we drove around to the other side of this reservoir to see if we could get a closer look from that side. There were more ducks over on this side, including this little group of American Coots.

Here's one look at the ducks. My duck ID skills aren't the best, but through my spotting scope, I managed to see and ID several species, including Northern Pintails, Northern Shovelers, Mallards, Green Winged Teals, Ringnecked Ducks, and Canvasbacks. I'm sure there were others I missed, but that will give me a reason to head back to this reservoir on another warm spring day.......

There were also several Trumpeter Swans on this reservoir. You can see two of them in this photo below. (BTW, remember you can click on any of these photos to make them bigger!)

Here's another look at all the Greater White Fronted Geese with some other ducks and geese mixed in. See that white one over to the left? That's the white adult Snow Goose. (I think the white bird over to the right is a gull.)

One last stop before heading for home was the County 9 Wetlands just east of Rochester. That lake was still mostly covered with ice, so nothing really noteworthy there except for the juvenile Bald Eagle that flew from a dead tree nearby. You can tell that the geese were not at all concerned with this eagle's presence. And see the houses right in the background? Sadly, the City of Rochester is rapidly encroaching on more wildlife areas.

I hope all of you are enjoying some early spring weather and chances to get outside and see who's flying into your area! Have a good week!

Nuthatch Love

Chickadees are cute and fun to watch, but you know what bird I really enjoy visiting my feeders? Yup, it's the nuthatch! They're not too common in my backyard, not enough trees I guess, but I have 1 nuthatch who visits fairly regularly and sometimes a second nuthatch comes along to check out the feeders. On the weekends when I'm home, I turn on my outside speaker to hear the birds chirping and that's how I know the nuthatch has arrived -- I can hear its squeaky little chirps and "yanks" as it searches for peanuts in the birdfeeders. Let's watch......

Hey, this feeder looks like it's full of peanuts!

Wow, from this perspective all's I can see is peanuts! Is that for me?

Dang! That's a tight squeeze! Must. Get. Peanut!!
Finally got it! Making sure I don't drop this peanut.....

Let's go & find a quieter spot to enjoy this peanut -- the paparazzi's making me nervous!

In addition to feeding shelled peanuts, I put out a birdseed blend that contains peanuts and sunflower hearts in a couple different feeders. This little seed ball that my dear friend Lynne gave me works great for this seed blend and accomodates only the clinging birdies -- nuthatches included!

The Yankee Tipper is where nuthatch usually heads first at feeding time -- four ports in which to search for peanuts!

Years ago when I worked at Wild Birds Unlimited, we once had a customer come in and asked us to help him identify a bird that was coming to his feeder -- obviously new to birding, the best way he could describe it was that it looked like a "miniature bluejay." After several minutes of questions about the bird's habits and more description, we finally showed him picture of a nuthatch and he said, "yeah, that's it!"

Miniature Bluejay? Really??
(I guess that's an honest, novice birding mistake.....)

2012 Wish List

Here's my wish list for Life Birds I'd like to see in 2012. I chose these birds specifically because I think they're attainable without having to travel great distances -- possibly without even leaving Minnesota!


I found a Golden-Winged Warbler last spring when I was volunteering for the BirdSafe monitoring project, but it was already dead, so I couldn't count that one. It would be much more satisfying to see one alive anyway. I also saw in our local paper this week that a Spotted Towhee has been hanging out in a backyard in Austin, MN (only 26 miles away) so a trip to Austin is on my agenda for this coming weekend. I'm hoping to be able to check off the Bohemian Waxwing and Long-Tailed Duck during the upcoming Sax-Zim Winter Birding festival.

I'll be posting periodic updates to this list as progress is made. This is a pretty ambitious list, but I do have an entire year to achieve my goal. Wish me luck!

Birding Close to Home

Yesterday afternoon we took advantage of the summer-like weather to visit Root River Park, a new county park about 5 miles from where we live.
In case you're wondering, this park has also become the new home of a certain very large raccoon.....

The park had a nice parking area, a handicapped accessible porta-potty, and nice, wide mowed paths. I don't know how many acres the park is or how many miles of trails there are, so I'll have to do some research into that. I do know that it's a great birding area with trails bordering forest edges, through the woods, along the riverbank and through grasslands, so there were ample opportunities for us to see many different things. As we were walking down the trail into the woods, I saw a larger bird ahead, skulking through the branches of a small cedar tree. At first I thought maybe a brown thrasher, but a look through the binocs showed a much darker brown color. I walked a little bit closer and the bird flushed into some overhead branches. Awesome! A cuckoo! Now, will it sit still long enough for me to get a good look so I can determine whether it's a yellow-billed or black-billed?

What do you think? I went with Black-Billed Cuckoo on this one. I used my birdJam to play a few calls and got this cuckoo to fly to another branch with less cover. Definitely a good way to start the afternoon!

The bird never vocalized, but we did have the chance to see it again in the same area on our way out, so I'm wondering if it doesn't have a partner and they're nesting in the park.

The trail wound down the hill to the river bottom and we could hear several Common Yellowthroats singing. Again the birdJam was put into use and this male came over to investigate the intruder in his territory. I was fortunate enough to snap this one pretty good picture as he sat still for a nanosecond!

A few yards farther down the trail and I heard a distinctive "bee-buzz" from one of the trees to my left. Aw man, Blue-Winged Warbler! I've heard them, but never gotten a good look at one before. A quick scroll through the menu to Blue-Winged Warbler on the birdJam and after only a few calls, this handsome male flew in to chase away the intruder in his territory also.

From this dead branch, I got a really good photo op, so I just pressed the button and the continous shooting feature did the rest......

a great flight shot, showing his bright yellow underneath and the white sides of his tail.

Look out! It's a Blue-Winged Warbler dive bomb!

I spotted this male Eastern Bluebird sitting on the top of an old dead tree stump in the middle of a pasture. He was keeping an eye on the nestbox which was located about 50 yards away.

At the edge of the Root River, we had fun watching this female Baltimore Oriole enjoy a bath.
There was a small rock just barely submerged under the water and just deep enough for her to be able to get under the water and make some big splashes.

She spent quite a bit of time there until she was pretty much soaked, and then she flew off to a sunny branch just above this river bank.

There were plenty of wildflowers blooming along the trail edges too. Here are a few:

Wild Blue Phlox

Golden Alexander

Wild Mint

Columbine

Huge patch of blue phlox along the riverbank (this picture is my desktop wallpaper)

Wild Geranium

We wondered how this White Pine grew as large as it was with its roots right at the edge of the rocky bluff......

Also saw this beautiful Mourning Cloak butterfly. I've never noticed the "eyes" on its wings before........

This was a great park and I'm looking forward to visiting it again to explore some of the other trails. Root River Park will definitely be at the top of my "must visit" birding list during next spring's warbler migration.