Warblers from Wood Lake to Hold You Over

I have spent the past couple of days exploring some of the best birding spots in Montana. Friday I was at Medecine Lake NWR and today I made my first trip to Bowdion NWR. This part of Montana appears to going through some what of a drought and both parks appeared to be much dryer then normal, so birding was harder then it was last year. I have not had time to upload any pics, since we just got to the hotel after a full day of birding and driving, but I do have some nice shots that I took at Wood Lake Nature Center on May 9th.

grackle
yellow-rumped warbler
palm warbler
black and white warbler

orange-crowned warbler

Tomorrow we head into Yellowstone. Depending on how late that we shoot I will try and get a couple of sample pics of the trip uploaded.

A trip to Duluth starting at Wisconsin Point

Thursday's weather was as nice as promised. I took a half day off of work so that I could go back up to Duluth and spend most of the day birding. I started my day across the border at Wisconsin point. As I was driving into the point I saw this hawk on a small tree in the marshy area along the road.
At first I thought that I might have a juvenile ferruginous hawk, since it did not have a defined belly band and when it took off I could not see any red in the tail.However when I got home and examined the pictures on my PC it was plain that the feathers on the leg do not extend down all the way to the feet, which means it could not be a ferruginous hawk. It is red-tailed hawk, prolly a juvenile, which would explain the lack of red in the tail and the indistinct belly spotting. Down on the beach things were pretty quiet. There were a few gull out by the light house, I decided that I did not want to crawl across the rock wall with my new camera to get any pictures of them, and an American crow working on his tan. Next I decided to go check out the wooded areas around the beach.There I saw some chickadees and a couple of white-breasted nuthatch. Since things were pretty quiet I decided to move on and check out the Minnesota side. On my way back to the bridge I swung through a few areas down by the water where I saw a lot of Canadian geese, gulls and this common grackle. I will post more on my Duluth trip tomorrow.

Spring migration bird walks at Wood Lake Nature Center

Spring is a great time here in Minnesota. After several months of cold and snow and gray cloudy days, it is great to see things come back to life. It is also a fun time for birding, with a lot of migrants coming through. For the past couple weeks I have spent my Thursday evenings at Wood Lake Nature Center, attending their spring migration bird walks. This has been a lot of fun. Having started birding and photography some time ago I am usually pretty good at finding subjects on my own, but sometimes it is fun to share the experience with a group of people. While I was waiting for the walk to start I noticed this cardinal at the feeders by the visitor center. As I walked over he decided to move to a safer perch but he was obviously used to humans. Cardinals are pretty common in this area.

There were also quite a few barn swallows buzzing around the visitors center also. They have been building nests on the buildings. I think this pair was trying to get the 10 day weather forecast.On the May 3rd walk the naturalist mentioned that the Baltimore Orioles had been spotted migrating through and with in minutes we spotted a couple. They were in pretty dense foliage in the trees so the picture was not as clear as I would have liked it. Another new migrant that we saw on the may 3rd walk were some green heron. Unfortunately they were flying through a forested part of the park and I was not able to get a picture. On both walks that I have participated in we have seen a lot of the common marsh birds, such as mallard, canadian geese, wood ducks, common grackle, and red-winged blackbirds.

This female wood duck had a great reflection.

This blackbird was puffed up as he sang. Their song is a warning to other males to stay away from their territory. Can you imagine how much better the world would be if people settled their disputes this way? Instead of sending soldiers to Iraq we could send the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or maybe Pearl Jam, just not Janet Jackson, we wouldn't want to start an international incident.
On the April 26th walk we were pretty excited to see a yellow-headed blackbird. These are not very common in our area since we are on the very edge of their range. I have photographed yellow-heads before but this was the first one that I have seen in Minnesota.

We were also excited that week to catch a glimpse of a red fox. He caught a glimpse of us first though, and I don't think he was too excited about seeing 15 birders wondering around. The naturalist showed us a possible fox den, from a distance, and told us that it was about time for the pups to be born. I will be checking back and try to get a shot of the pups.

All in all these walks were a lot of fun. There is still at least 1 walk left on May 10th. The walks cost $5 and begins at 6:00pm. For more information check out their web site http://www.woodlakenaturecenter.org/

Other adventures at Wood Lake

I have not been back to Wood Lake to see the owls in a couple of days. In fact I have not done much birding at all. Tuesdays I work a second job in the evening so I don't really have much time for anything except work. I can't complain too much though since the second job helps to pay for my toys and my trips. Wednesday I worked a long day and the weather was overcast all day long. I went to check out a newly occupied osprey platform after work. Since it was pretty cloudy I did not really get any good shots and since I was tired from work I decided not to stay long and went home and took a nap instead. So I did not really get any new shots but I still have some shots to share from the past couple weeks.



While visiting the owls at Wood Lake Nature Center I took the time to exercise my legs and check out the rest of the park.
As I walked down the path through the marshy area I could see that the grackle and the red-wing blackbirds had returned.

In the open waters I spotted the typical mallards and canadian geese but was also excited to see a pair of hooded mergansers. Mergansers and grebes have always been fascinating to me.
I also spotted a pair of wood ducks. The color on the male was very vibrant especially the red eye.
It looks like today the weather is pretty much the same as yesterday. So I will prolly post some more owl pictures tomorrow. It is supposed to be a bit sunnier tomorrow and nice this weekend so hopefully I can get some shots of the osprey nest as well as some pictures of a local eagles nest and visit the owls.