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!

Easter Sunday 2011

Hope you all had a very happy Easter Sunday! We drove down to Mom & Dad's and celebrated with the rest of my family. My little nephew Ethan had an excellent Easter egg hunt.

After finishing our meal, stacking the dishes for Mom to fill the dishwasher and packing up some delicious leftovers to bring home, we headed for home with a short detour through rural Fillmore County to see if we could find the White Winged Scoter that had been spotted a week ago. Along the way, we saw this fox running across a field and heading for the road.

After turning the car around so I could take some better photos, the fox had the same idea -- turn around and run!

After turning down another gravel road, we finally spotted the pond where the scoter was supposed to be hanging out at. I first spotted this Lesser Yellowlegs scouting the muddy edge closest to the road.

And there he was! The White Winged Scoter! (click on the photo to enlarge it) The first ever recorded sighting of this bird in Fillmore County.

We first heard about this duck earlier last week when we were out birding and ran into Chris Hockema. Chris told us the duck's plumage was somewhat different than what's usually seen on an adult males scoter, but that the dark head and white eye "comma" were easily seen for a definitive ID. I was really glad this duck was still hanging around and we got a chance to see it. Thanks to John and Chris Hockema for locating the duck and sharing its location with other Minnesota birders.

Birding Close to Home

Mr. Johnson decided we should take advantage of a bit of nice weather today (between snowy and rainy days) and do a little birding close to home (as gas has now gone up to $3.79 here!) Our first stop was the County 9 wetlands, about a mile east of Rochester. As usual the Giant Canada Geese and Coots dominated this large pond, but we also saw some Northern Shovelers, Ring-Necked Ducks, a Bufflehead (lifer!) pair and one Redhead. No shorebirds were seen, but I did spot a Swamp Sparrow flitting around in the tall grasses close to the observation deck where we were standing. I managed to get a couple photos that were good enough to confirm this little bird's identity.
Not a life bird, but it was still neat to spot this early spring arrival and get some good photos.

After a quick lunch at KFC (have you tried any of their $5 lunches? Delicious!!) We headed a few miles west of Rochester to the Kalmar Reservoir. Most of the waterfowl was at the other end of the reservoir, but fortunately one of Rochester's premier birders, Chris Hockema, was also at the reservoir with his spotting scope and he helped us to locate some waterfowl that we hadn't seen yet this year: Eared Grebe and Ruddy Duck. Like the County 9 wetland, Coots were the dominant bird here.

I was amazed to see that many of these coots were spending quite a bit of time on shore poking around in the grass. Not sure what they were foraging for, but it was interesting to see them walking around on land.

As were were pulling out of the reservoir driveway, I saw these 2 handsome fellows hanging out together at the little waterway next to the road. I never thought of Mallards as particularly large ducks, but this guy just dwarfs the Blue-Winged Teal drake. An odd couple for sure, but they certainly posed nicely for my camera, don't you think?

More rain is in the forecast for tonite, tomorrow and maybe a little bit on Saturday, but Sunday is supposed to be sunny before the next round of rainy weather moves in for next week. Hopefully the weather will straighten out soon and we can get started on our next birdquest -- migrating shorebirds.

Waterfowl Afternoon

It was a beautiful, sunny day here in southeastern Minnesota -- perfect for a drive thru the Whitewater Valley IBA this afternoon in search of migrating waterfowl. Here are some photos of what we found today.......

Greater Scaup
A handsome bird with a pretty light blue bill

Common Merganser, Male

But wait, there's more!
Two more male mergansers were escorting this pretty female down the Whitewater River.

We saw some Hooded Mergansers also, but they were pretty flighty and I wasn't able to get any photos of them.

These gulls blended in well with the ice still remaining on the edge of this pond. (That's a goose nesting box platform in the background and a muskrat lodge in the foreground.)

Here's a Canada Goose with a much smaller partner. Does anyone have a thought on ID of the smaller goose? Looking at my big Sibley guide, I'm wondering whether it might be a Richardson's or Lesser Canada Goose?
A few miles farther down the road, we came to a large pond with lots of waterfowl. Close to the road I got this great shot of a beautiful Canvasback duck. With my binoculars, I could even see his pretty red eye. Even though you can barely see the dark rust color of his head, he has the "unique head shape with long black bill and flat forehead" as described in my big Sibley guide.
At the other side of the pond there were lots of different ducks. We saw more Canvasbacks and also some Ring-Necked Ducks and even a couple of Northern Shovelers.

Go ahead and click on these photos for an enlarged view of all the different ducks here.

And here was a Canada Goose already occupying her next box platform.

Hope you enjoyed our lovely Minnesota spring afternoon!

A Sunday Trip to the Mississippi

The weather was pretty nice today, so we decided it would be a good day to take a drive down towards the Mississippi and see if we could spot some eagles and any other interesting birds. Here's the report of what we saw today. We drove up to Lake City and then headed south on Highway 61 (Minnesota's Gret River Road).
Fortunately, traffic wasn't too heavy this afternoon and there are several pull-outs along the highway where we can get some good looks at the river and birds. This is the Mississippi completely frozen over.

The hills on the other side of the river are Wisconsin and the Canadian Pacific railroad tracks run along both sides of the river.

There was one really large spot of open water right in front of one of the pull-outs, so I was able to get out and take some pictures. Here's an adult Bald Eagle perched in one of the trees along the river. There were lots of ducks swimming around in this open water too.

There were at least 10 eagles (both adults and sub-adults) flying around here, in addition to several other eagles we saw perched in trees and sitting on the edge of the ice.

It was fun watching the eagles swoop down close to the water over the ducks and the ducks disappearing under the water to stay out of the eagle's talons. I'm not sure whether the eagles really like to eat ducks or if they were just messin' with the ducks for some entertainment.

There were lots of different ducks out here, but they were quite a ways out there and it was just too cold for me to set up the spotting scope and spend much time trying to identify them. I could tell from the quacks that there were some mallards there. I also noticed some Common Mergansers and Common Goldeneyes.

While we were there a Canadian Pacific freight train came by pulling a bunch of tanker cars filled with what we thought was ethanol.

OK, time to get back in the truck to get warmed up and find some more birds. Our next stop was some open water down by Read's Landing where I spotted these swans. Holy crap, swans?

There were at least 8 of these swans in this area and I think they were Trumpeter Swans. What do you think?

We continued down to Wabasha where we crossed the bridge over to Wisconsin and headed south towards Alma and the open water at the lock & dam there. I was surprised to see swans in the open water at Alma too. Unfortunately, it was getting late in the afternoon and the sun was at the wrong angle for me to get any decent pictures. but I this these might be Tundra Swans. They were that grayish color similar to the juvenile Tundra Swans we saw on the Mississippi last November during their migration.

There were quite a few ducks in the water here too, but the light wasn't right for me to be able to identify any of them.

However, there were quite a few Bald Eagles in this area too. We saw at least 12 sitting on the ice at the edge of the open water in addition to a few soaring around.

But the coolest thing we saw here was when we started looking at the trees on the other side of the river and saw that there were Bald Eagles perched in a number of trees. I counted 11 Bald Eagles perched in this one tree!
This reminds me of eagle pictures I've seen from Alaska....we were so amazed to see so many Bald Eagles here in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Tundra Swans and MORE!

My apologies to any dial-up users -- this post is going to be very heavy on photos and videos.

For the last couple weeks or so, we've been hearing tundra swans flying over -- sometimes while on the deer stand and also real early in the morning when we get up for work. So earlier this week, we made plans to take a drive down to the Mississippi just south of Brownsville, MN to view this spectacle before they continue their migration to their final wintering grounds in the Chesapeake Bay. Usually my Sissy and I take this trip in November, but this year Mr. Johnson decided he'd like to go, so I gladly decided to let him drive (while I knitted, of course!)

I was really disappointed when I woke up early this morning to heavy fog and a dense fog advisory until 10 AM. Fortunately the fog wasn't quite as thick right down on the river as on the higher ridgetops.

Although the weather conditions weren't optimal, I did manage to get a few marginally good photos and videos. These swans are so beautiful in flight. Their wingspan is approximately 5 and a half feet.

Here's an adult with two of this year's hatchlings. Their grayish feathers and pinkish beaks distinguish them from the adults. These juveniles will stay with their parents for a year.

There seems to be plenty of things for them to eat on the bottom of this shallow part of the river. Watching these birds, we saw that most of them were able to just stick their heads under the water to find food, but the juvenile in the center of this picture must have been especially hungry because it was "tipped up" quite a bit of the time!

Preening seemed to be quite an important activity also.

I took quite a few short videos and "stitched" them together to make a couple of longer videos for your viewing enjoyment. Here's Part 1.......

Here's Part 2 of the video. In it you will hear Mr. Johnson ask me if they're protected to which I reply "yes" (don't ask my why I was whispering -- it's not like I was going to scare any birds away by talking out loud!) Anyway, that got me to thinking about whether they're hunted anywhere, so after doing a google search on "tundra swan hunting" I found that several western states do, in fact, allow hunting of tundra swans: Utah, Nevada, Montana, and a limited hunt in North Dakota. Fortunately, Minnesota and Wisconsin have not established any hunting seasons on these beautiful birds.

I was really surprised to see several small flocks of American White Pelicans hanging around in this area of the river also. For some reason, I thought that they would have all migrated through by now.

We drove up the road to check out a couple other viewing areas and I was able to capture this video of a small group of the pelicans "fishing" for their dinner.

There was plenty of other waterfowl in the area also. My duck ID skills are poor at best--when I saw this duck, my first thought was "Bufflehead." Then when I looked at the preview on my camera, I realized that looked more like a merganser beak, so checked my field guide again to confirm the ID of Male Hooded Merganser. This photo really doesn't do it justice, so if you have a field guide handy, look it up to see what a truly beautiful bird this is.

Here's another poor photo of some ducks I couldn't ID. Anybody have any thoughts on these? I'm thinking perhaps Green-Winged Teal or perhaps Gadwall (based on the black rump).

Here's another large group of different ducks. I think I saw a Ring-Necked Duck in the group (the big white ring around the tip of the bill helped with that ID). I think it looks like there are probably a couple of Canvasbacks in this group too.

In spite of the overcast skies and chilly temps, it turned out to be a wonderful day. The sounds and sights of all these swans and waterfowl was so awesome and my only disappointment was that we didn't have the luxury of spending the entire day down there watching them!