On Wednesday I drove and birded Hedbom Forest Road near Floodwood. This birding spot is one of my NE Minnesota Birding Locations and part of the free PDF of birding locations you may download / use on your mobile device.

Hedbom is wunderbar! I’m not certain how much longer this forest road will continue to be drivable this winter as snow will get deeper, but for the moment if you are in the vicinity of Floodwood, Minnesota check it out. One need only drive the first 3.5 miles from the gate to see the best habitat. While I did not find any owls (I was hoping I might find a hawk owl) I did find hundreds and hundreds of Common Redpolls. These birds are invading NE Minnesota this winter. Right now they are not visiting feeders, but later in the winter that equation will change. For the moment they are finding lots of natural food in the forest.

While many of these images may look like you are seeing the same bird, in actuality about 300 redpolls were gritting up right in front on my car, and I knew they would fly to a particular dead tree to clean their beaks.

Common Redpoll … Incoming!

And More Redpolls and Lichen