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!

Spring in March

March of 2012 was one for the records books -- warmest ever! I don't think we even saw a single flake of snow the entire 31 days. As a result, spring arrived about 5-6 weeks earlier than ever before. Now that April's here, we're actually experiencing more March-like weather, so I'm wishing for March weather again and reliving those spring-like days in these photos that I took during March.

I cleaned out my pantry one Saturday morning and found a partial bag of old, dried-up raisins. I dumped them out in the bird tray on the deck thinking that perhaps the robins or house finches might enjoy them. I was very surprised the next morning to find these honeybees feasting on the sweet raisins. Two of my neighbors have beehives, so I'm hoping these bees were some from their hives that survived our mild winter.

A few years ago Mr. Johnson got a deer, but he decided not to mount the antlers. He was just going to throw them away, but I told him I wanted to nail them to a dead tree in the backyard for the birds to perch on. There's a birdfeeder nearby and the birds actually do use the antlers for perching because all the branches have fallen off the dead tree. One afternoon when I was putting out yarn scraps for nesting material, I noticed that these antlers have also been munched on by some hungry little critters.
I've heard that small rodents will chew on antlers in the woods, but I always thought it was strictly when they were laying on the ground. I was surprised and amazed to see that they were even able to find these antlers attached 5 feet up a tree. They've done a pretty good job of chewing up this "bird perch!"

Last September at the Midwest Birding Symposium, I bought one of these alpaca nesting balls from my friend Kimberly who owns All Things Alpaca, LLC. It sat in my dining room all winter just waiting for spring nesting season. With spring birds arriving early this year, I decided it was time to get that nesting ball hung outside where it belonged. A couple days after this photo was taken, I moved the nesting ball to a tree branch in the hopes that maybe the birds would be more likely to notice it there......

In just the last few days, I've notice the nesting ball is looking pretty ratty -- something's been pulling on those alpaca fibers! I know the chickadees are busy in the little nest box in my front yard, so I did a little snooping the other nite..... Sure enough, mixed in with the grass and moss, there's all kinds of soft alpaca fiber! With the cold nites we've been having again lately, I'm sure Mrs. Chickadee really appreciates that cozy little nest she's built (and so will her babies).

My Nanking cherries put on a beautiful display of flowers in the middle of March. I know the birds love these cherries once they're ripe, so I'm hoping the overnite, below freezing temps we've had lately haven't frozen off the developing cherries.

Late last summer, I bought a purple butterfly bush at local garden center. The blossoms were beautiful and even though it was still a small bush, the butterflies found it right away and loved it. I know it's a Zone 5 plant, but luckily we had a Zone 5 winter this year in Minnesota and I was thrilled to see this plant is still alive in my butterfly garden!

A little red squirrel is living underneath the utility shed. She showed up one afternoon to raid the peanut feeder. Seeing her round little tummy makes me think that there will probably be more little red squirrels in my backyard this summer! What do you think?

Spring birds also began arriving earlier than in previous years. On March 26th, a Eurasian Collared Dove showed up in the backyard. It was only here for that one day, but they're becoming quite common in Minnesota, so maybe I'll be seeing them here more frequently too.

A couple male Red-Winged Blackbirds had a little showdown at the birdfeeder one morning. Aren't they handsome? Fortunately, they were more interested in eating than defending their territory, and both of them had to fly away when a Bluejay showed up at the birdfeeder too. I love Red-Winged Blackbirds and feel fortunate that they nest nearby and are regular backyard birdfeeder visitors for at least 6 months of the year.

Hope you're enjoying spring in your backyard too!

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!

A "Spring" Day in Minnesota

Since this has been a winter for the record books here in Minnesota, I guess there's really no reason we should have expected spring to arrive on schedule. It's just hard to believe that today could have been so awful when just 2 days ago it was 50 degrees and sunny!

Thunderstorms with heavy rain yesterday and last night gave way to heavy snow for much of the morning. It's a good thing there are still a few crabapples left on some of my trees for my robins!

Lots of juncos still in the backyard although the birdseed I spread on the ground for them was covered by snow in a very short time. Fortunately, they were able to scratch and scrounge around enough to find it.

Little red squirrel took advantage of birdseed on top of this stump feeder. The snow doesn't seem to bother him at all.

Another little red squirrel discovered the full seed tray on my deck. I like how he uses his tail as a snow shield and also how his ears and whiskers collect and hold the snowflakes (click on the pic to enlarge it). They are little piggies, but still so cute & fun to watch.

Couldn't resist taking yet another cardinal photo. They're singing the spring songs, but still not actively asserting dominance for territorial rights in my backyard yet, so I'm still seeing a number of cardinals at the birdfeeders.

Here's a house finch, junco and goldfinch all taking advantage of the big birdfeeder. Just yesterday we noticed that grass in the backyard was actually starting to look a little greener!

It took a few attempts, but the downy woodpeckers finally remembered how to get inside the cage to the suet log. I had to put the cage back on the suet log because flocks of European starlings (who arrived back with the blackbirds and grackles) had picked this suet log clean. My starling trap has been getting a real workout this week (that's the topic for a future blog post.....)

Huge flocks of blackbirds arrived late last week. These are mostly common grackles and red-winged blackbirds, but I'm thinking there might be some rusty blackbirds and/or Brewer's blackbirds mixed in with these flocks too.

When we were out on a birding drive last Saturday afternoon, we got to hear and see some rusty blackbirds. They have a really distinctive song which I was able to identify with the help of my birdJam.

I don't know about you, but there's just something fundamentally wrong with seeing and hearing a spring/summer bird in this snowy landscape. (Maybe the birds think so too!) I'm pretty sure this is a first year male red-winged blackbird. Spots and wing bars are still visible, but it also looks like there might be a few of the red shoulder feathers appearing too.

And here's a really beautifully streaked female red-winged blackbird. The females are far less abundant at my backyard feeders, so I always consider it a rare privilege to see them -- especially this close!

The only nice thing about wintry weather this time of year is that we can be fairly certain it will be short-lived. Temps are are going to be pretty chilly for the next couple days, but highs in the 40s are predicted for the weekend. I've had my Nature's Window monitor turned on all day and am enjoying hearing all the spring bird songs even when it's just too nasty to spend much time outside.

Hope you're enjoying some spring birds in your backyard!

Some Miscellaneous Photos

Here are some miscellaneous photos I've taken in the last couple weeks.......

A female Pileated Woodpecker showed up at the big suet feeder right outside the back door. That was really exciting as it's the first time I've have a pileated in the backyard. She's come back a few times since then, but she's not a regular daily visitor yet.

Oops! Dropped some suet! Check out those huge feet.....I think that each square on that mesh is about 1 inch.

Here's a pretty snow-covered evergreen in the backyard......just one of many. The snow covered boughs provide some nice protection for the birdies that roost inside the snowy shelter.

Look what arrived in the mailbox today!! Nothing like a couple seed catalogs to get my mind off the sub-zero windchills and 2+ feet of snow piled up on my garden beds.

Looking forward to some fantastic photos in 2011 with the fabulous new camera that my Honey Bunny gave me for Christmas. Thank you Mr. Johnson!

Hello Spring!

I heard and saw the first Eastern Bluebirds of spring in my backyard this morning. They're definitely a welcome sign of spring. So I decided to take a walk around the backyard to find some other signs of spring. Come on along and let me show you what I found.....

Tiny hyacinths blooming close to the house

Daffodils are up a few inches

Daylilies are coming up too, but it looks like these ones caught a little frostbite!

I love the brilliant color of these red-twig dogwoods!

I let my inner fire-bug out last Sunday morning and burned off some dead grass and weeds at the driveway edge (pink arrow) and in a wild patch of the front yard.

I'm hoping next week there might be a nice, calm day that would be

perfect for the fire-bug and her butane torch to burn off the dead stalks of the backyard wildflower garden.

I was looking for any signs of life on the trees and spotted these pretty sprouts on a maple branch

And since the bluebirds are back now, it looks like I'm going to have to become much more vigilant against those pesty house sparrows.