All posts by richardhoeg@gmail.com

New Year’s Day Northern Hawk Owl

Year 12

2025 started out extra special. After listening to Les and Amy hoot during the pre-dawn dark hours of the morning I left with a friend to go birding. As you may know, the Northern Hawk Owl is my blog’s signature bird. Oh my, did the New Year have a treat in store for me. Not only did the owl put on a hunting show for us, the forecast clouds disappeared for a brief time and blue skies / sun made an appearance.

I will lead with this video. While watching the video it should be obvious that not only was I amazingly close to the owl, but it could care less about me. I ever approached the Northern Hawk Owl, but it decided that the dead white bird near where I was standing was a great hunting platform. It flew own and landed next to me! 2025 will be a fantastic birding year if this owl is any indication! (video link for blog email subscribers)

Here are two photographs I took this morning while the Northern Hawk Owl was hunting. I spent over two hours watching the owl, and it was still hunting when I left because the 12F temperature and brisk wind was chilling me … at least for me if not the owl.

This will be a two part blog post. I have only edited a couple of all the images I took this morning. Happy New Year!

Doctor’s Visit Great Gray Owl

Year 11

I was distracted on New Year’s Eve Day on the way to and from some medical appointments yesterday. Three different Great Gray Owls decided I should take some time out and enjoy nature … one in the morning a few minutes before sunrise, and then two owls in the afternoon.

The first owl was quite concerned about some crows, but not about me or any of the cars rushing by on the highway. I definitely was NOT in a normal birding location while watching the first Great Gray Owl (video link for email subscribers).

Great Gray Owl #1 (in the morning just before sunrise … watching crows)

Great Gray Owls #2 (after my medical appointments)

Listen and Learn Birding: Spotted Towhee!

Year 11

Given I live in northeastern Minnesota, I rarely see towhees. Just a few minutes yesterday morning before I took the video included with this post, I watched another towhee and listened to its call. Minutes later I heard the same call, and found this individual! Don’t forget that the Merlin App (my review), which is from the Cornell School of Ornithology, is also a great tool in that it will help you learn bird songs.

Anyhow, I learned one the call of the Spotted Towhee, then heard another and these images and video were the result (video link for email subscribers)

The other bird of the day for me was what most folks out here would consider common, a slate colored junco (dark-eyed junco). However, even though the “scientific powers that be” in the birding world do not consider this Oregon junco variant a different species, browse to this post to view just how different the plumage is for this western junco (same species) as my local Minnesota bird.

Slate-Colored Junco – Oregon Plumage

All the photographs in today’s post were taken during drizzle conditions yesterday. While being out in the rain might not see like much fun, if one can keep the drab sky out of photographs, colors are often very intense on wet days.