White-tailed Deer Fawn

It's that time of year again when all of the super cute babies are out. Last weekend when I was heading back from St Croix State Park a white-tailed deer fawn came running down the dirt road that I was traveling on. I stopped when I saw it but it kept on going and I was a bit concerned that it might run straight into my car. When it was about 25 feet away it finally realized that I was not mom and skidded to a stop. We sat looking at each other for a few minutes and then I took a few pictures from my open car door. When I finished shooting and shut the door it turned and ran back the direction that it came from at beak neck speed. I have not had the opportunity to process those pictures yet. This shot was taken this time last year at the Necedah Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin..

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge

With the Independence Day holiday last week I had a three day weekend so I decided to head over to central Wisconsin and shoot in the Necedah NWR for a couple of days. This was my first opportunity to get a look at the new visitors center and it is very impressive. Inside is a store, educational displays, offices, an info desk, small theatre and a nice sitting room complete with a fireplace. You can see from the picture above that much of the building is powered by renewable solar power.
One of the things that Necedah is famous for is their work with the endangered whooping crane. It is dangerous to have the majority of the remaining population of whoopers all in one area. Disease or natural disaster could destroy the entire population adding another extinct bird to the list. So the staff at Necedah has been working with a number of other organizations to set up a second migrating population. Unfortunately the only crane that I spotted over the weekend was a sandhill crane.
There were a lot of young birds that had recently fledged. I found a young kingbird perched on a branch overhanging a small stream. I watched for a while and was rewarded as one of the parents came down to feed the youngster a plump insect.
As I watched the kingbirds feeding four river otters appeared and began to play in the stream. So I switched subjects. I think that Michelle was kind of jealous because she really likes to watch otters.
Necedah has a variety of habitats to explore. Near the new Visitors Center they have built some trails into and over the wetlands. Raised boardwalks help give visitors a good look at wildlife with out getting their feet too wet.
I also took a hike on the new boardwalk that skits a boggy area. I was hoping to get a glance and a photo of a ringed boghaunter dragonfly. Necedah is in one of the few counties in Wisconsin where this member of the emerald family can be found, the only other place to find them in the Midwest is Michigan. It was a little late in the year for the boghaunter but I did find quite a few racket-tailed emeralds.
Also near the bog trail I found several bobolink. There were two pairs that squawked at me noisily as I walked down the trail. I wonder if they were nesting near the trail and I was getting to close to the nest.
One of the birds that I always like to photograph when I go to Necedah is the red-headed woodpecker. Although they are not endangered like the whooper are their population has been decreasing over the years. The problem that they are facing is habitat lose. Red-headed woodpeckers live in a habitat that has a lot of dead trees for nesting and caching food. They also require some space between the trees. This type of habitat has become scarce and the red-head population has declined as a result. Fortunately Necedah still has a lot of area that fits the bill and it is quite easy to see the red-heads flitting between the trees.
On my way out of the refuge I saw another youngster crossing the road. Mom was already in the woods on the side of the road but junior slowed down to take a look at the curios shiny creature on the road in front of him.

White Tail Fawn Dodge

While I was photographing the dragonflies, butterflies, and bees out in the flowering lupine of Dodge Nature Center, in mid June, I got a plesant surprise, I looked up to see a young fawn heading across the field. I don't think that it noticed me until it was about 10 to 15 feet away. When it did notice me it stopped and checked me out curiously while I took the opportunity to snap some great pics.

Eventually he left the field and dissappered off into the woods.

Midwest Birding Symposium- The trip home

I left the Quad Cities early Sunday morning. There were still a few workshops and field trips scheduled for Sunday but I had about a 7 hour drive home and had to be back to work early Monday morning. I decided to take the scenic route again, following the Mississippi, instead of the freeways. Unfortunately the skies were mostly cloudy all the way until I got to Winona, MN so I did not make many stops. I did take one detour just south of Lacrosse to Goose Island Park. Right before I got to the turn off for the park I spotted a red-tailed hawk on the power lines on the side of the highway. It was not very good light but he was close to the road so I decided to stop and take a couple shots.

There must of been some precipitation because one of the shots showed the bird with it's nictitating membrane closed.

Goose Island is a county park that is surrounded by the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. The park has a playground, boat ramp, picnic and camping areas.

There is also a lot of wetlands from the Upper Mississippi NWFR surrounding the park. These wetlands were good habitat for ducks, herons, kingfishers and great egrets, like the one above.

Squirrels foraged many of the human occupied areas of the park, including black squirrels which we do not often see where I live.

While I was driving through I spotted a white-tailed doe near the road. She stood there for a while and let me get a nice close up. I was curious why she stayed in one spot for so long, especially with me close by.

Then I saw the reason. She was waiting for two fawns, who where a bit more skittish about coming into the open.As I left the park traveling north I spotted another red-tailed hawk so I stopped to take another picture before I headed back on the road home.

Fort Snelling State Park

On June 29th I read on the Minnesota Ornithologists' Union list server that a prothonotary warbler had been spotted at Fort Snelling State Park. Since it is only a short 20 minute drive I decided to run over and see if I could get a picture. That day I did not see the prothonotary but I did get a good look at a peregrine falcon that appears to be living under the Mendota Bridge which passes directly over a large part of the park. Since the 29th I have made several trips back to Fort Snelling. I did get a glimpse of the prothonotary once as it crossed the path that I was on but was never able to get a picture. I did find some good subjects while I was in the park though. Like the eastern phoebe pictured below. I found him at the edge of a small field that opened up out of the woods.

There were also some downy woodpeckers checking out the small trees that lined the field.

On most my trips to the park I got some shots of indigo bunting.

They liked to sing in a dead tree on the side of the trail.
The indigo bunting were more blue then this juvenile eastern bluebird that I found.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.
The egrets and heron are not the only hunters in the park. Several times I have spotted the peregrine again on my visits.

Unfortunately I have not been as close as the first time that I spotted it, usually I see it perched on the high support beams of the bridge.

But one morning I was lucky and it decided to take off from a beam that was fairly close and so I got some decent flight shots.

There are other things to photograph in the park other then birds. 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.

However the fawns are still cute and fun to watch and they are plentiful at this time.

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.

Return trip to Crex Meadows

On June 30 we made another trip back up to Crex Meadows to see if we could get some better shots of the trumpeter swan cygnets that we had seen 2 weeks before. Crex Meadows is a wildlife management area located just over the border in Wisconsin. The name comes from the Crex Carpet company who once owned the land. The Crex Carpet Co. made grass rugs and used the wetlands to grow and harvest the grass for the rugs which where made in St Paul, MN. During the 1930's the company fell on hard times and during the depression they were not able to pay the taxes on the land. The state of Wisconsin purchased 12,000 acres of the land in 1946 and developed Crex Meadows. The Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area in Minnesota is on land that also once belonged to the Crex Carpet Co. It's history is pretty much the same as Crex Meadows.

Crex consists mainly of open fields with lakes, ponds and pools controlled by a system of dikes and damns. There are some wooded areas on the borders of the park which are managed through routine cutting and burning. This helps promote the growth of the natural prairie.

Hunting is allowed in Crex Meadows during normal Wisconsin hunting seasons. Much of the financial support for the park comes from hunting licence fees. 2400 acres of the park is set aside as a wildlife refuge where hunting and trapping is not allowed.

It was a beautiful day, warm but not too hot with clear blue skies. We drove around to the eastern side of the park and headed up the East Refuge Road. As we drove we saw an american bald eagle flying overhead so we stopped to take a couple of pictures. We took my wife Honda, besides good gas mileage it also has a moon roof which is very helpful for spotting birds flying overhead.
We decided to turn West onto the Main Dike Road. The Main Dike Road travels East to West and is the south border of the refuge. It scurts several different waterways and is one of the best place to see waterfowl. It is also where we saw a group of cygnets on our last trip. As we started down the Main Dike Road we saw a common loon in a perfect pose standing in the water with it wings stretched out behind it. Unfortunately by the time we got close enough and got the car stopped he had sat back down into the water.
We sat and watched him for a while hoping that he would pose for us again, but after a while he moved off into the grass and so we moved on. At the Osprey platform in the Refuge Extension Flowage we saw another eagle but it was far away and took of before we could set up for a picture. We continued on the Main Dike Road off of the refuge and into the wildlife management area. Around Dike 5 we saw a pair of trumpeter swans with 5 cygnets. One of the adults was eating vegetation from under the water. The other adult and the cygnets were eating grasses on the shore. They were still a ways away but were closer then we had seen them 2 weeks before.

After shooting a couple gigs worth of pictures we decided to head down south to Phantom Lake. In the Zulliger Flowage we spotted another pair of trumpeters. This pair had no cygnets but they were very close to the road and very photogenic.
They also where not banded which is unusual for trumpeters at Crex.
At Phantom Lake we did not see much except for a mourning cloak butterfly.So we decided to head to the visitors center to use the restrooms and check out any sightings. After our break we decided to head back to Phantom Lake to try and find the red-necked grebes that have been reported to be breeding on the south side of the lake. We did not find the grebes but we did find a pair of sandhill cranes with a chick in tow.
Crex supports a small population of sandhills through out spring and summer. During the fall migration up to 7000 or more sandhills stop at Crex to eat for the long trip south. While Crex may not have the sheer numbers that you can see at the Platte River in Nebraska during the spring migration in March it does typically offer better and closer views. I have photographed sandhills nesting in Yellowstone but this was my first opportunity to photograph a sandhill chick. We soon lost the chick in the high grass so we decided to head back up to the Main Dike Road again. The Swan family were all in the water and had moved near to Dike 4. This time they were close to the road and easier to photograph.
They even obliged us some fantastic poses.

We continued down Main Dike Road and found the common loon back close to shore again.

This time we were ready when he posed for us.
We continued on and when we got close to the intersection of Main Dike Rd and East Refuge Rd a white tailed deer and fawn ran across the road. I grabbed the camera and was able to squeeze off a couple of shots before the disappeared into the brush.Since the sun was already very high in the sky, it was past 1:30 and my blood sugar was getting low we decided not to north side of the park. Next time I will have to remember to bring some food. Last fall while we were on the north side we photographed a peregrine falcon. there are also nesting osprey and eagles but we will have to save that for another trip.