Category Archives: Background

A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota

Background, Year 9

Looking for that perfect holiday gift for a birder? You MUST buy the just released “A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota” written by Kim Eckert. I own the first version of this book, and pre-ordered the book’s new release a month ago. While everyone likes to use eBird while planning birding excursions, you really need to learn habitat and use that knowledge to plan your outings. Kim’s book reviews  Minnesota habitat county by county and provides suggestions and maps on where you should focus your birding efforts. The book actually reviews over 1,400 Minnesota birding locations! (as a fyi I receive zero compensation or financial benefit for making this recommendation)

  • Purchase “The Birder’s Guide to Minnesota”

You will be browsing to the web site of Sparky Stensaas. Sparky is the Director of the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog. While you could purchase this book via Amazon, your purchase via Sparky’s web site (The Photo Naturalist) insures more of your money goes to support both birds and the author.

Some notes about Kim Eckert: He turned to a career in birding after moving to Duluth, Minnesota in 1977, where he served as Naturalist at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve (for a total of 20 years), taught bird identification classes for a decade, and started leading birding tours (including 30 years with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours). In 1986, Kim created the Minnesota Birding Weekends & Weeks program of tours throughout Minnesota and elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada, which is now in its 37th season. Visit Kim’s web site.

Wawina Bog / Floodwood Bog

Background, Year 9,

No bird photographs accompany this post … just very important birding information and maps. For those of you who have ever driven the stretch of US Hwy. 2 just West of Floodwood, you have undoubtedly noticed the HUGE area of beautiful Boreal Bog that stretches as far off the road as the eye can see, and is on both sides of the highway for miles. This bog’s formal name is the Wawina Peatland and Scientific Area. The region is remote, and almost impossible to access, but I finally found a road yesterday afternoon that provides extremely good access … the Hedbom State Forest Road (just west of Floodwood). The biggest section of the Wawina Bog is actually on the southern side of US Hwy. 2. My impression of the habitat seen from Hedbom State Forest Road is it is truly magical … with lots of Bog with open spaces interspaced into the forest yet also including a large number of deadheads for use as raptor hunting perches! Warning: Be very careful of logging trucks if the road is plowed in the winter. The forest road is single lane, and would require you to back up a loonnng ways!

Here are two screenshots I took via Google Maps and annotated. The satellite image shows the Bog area (my rectangle area), and the terrain version demonstrates it is not worth driving past my Google Maps GPS Point. Further west of my point on the Hedbom State Forest Road the land becomes rolling hills and deciduous forest … still beautiful, but not what this birder was looking to experience.

If you don’t have the time to drive the Hedbom State Forest Road (or later in the winter it will be snowbound … not plowed), then try the short four mile stretch of Cty. 429 that starts at Wawina Township on US Hwy. #2. This road will be plowed through the winter, but it does not get you anywhere as deep into the Bog. I found this Red-Tailed Hawk on Cty. 429 this past fall.

Once again, here are the GPS Points for the Wawina Bog / Floodwood Bog via the list I maintain on Google Maps.

Goodbye Lego Mindstorms

Background

Nooooooo! This is definitely an off topic post.

I learned with great dismay earlier today that the Lego Company is discontinuing its Lego Mindstorm Robotics product line. The number of boys and girls who learned programming skills via Lego Mindstorms and have gone on in their lives to become engineers is HUGE. I personally coached a Lego Mindstorms team for five years, and almost every team alum is now a working engineer. Perhaps my only alum who is not now an engineer … is now a pastor. I also consider that career choice a major success!

The announcement via enGadget. (very sad news … rather than just playing video games on a computer, Lego Mindstorm teaches kids robotics, mechanical engineering skills, and programming)

And now some blast from the past images … most pics taken by my wife, Molly, of S.N.I.P. (Super Nerds In Pink). This was our team name, and I told the boys if we made it to the Minnesota state tournament, they could spray paint my hair pink! Scroll down to see my “pink hair!”

Team Pics … I’m the old guy with pink hair!

The robot has to be built entirely with Lego parts. The embedded computer uses a visual programming language similar to LabView (created / maintained by Texas Instruments). The boys by their fifth year of competition also learned to program their robot directly using C Programming (a scientific programming language). During the competition, the robot had to accomplish assigned tasks, and could NOT be touched by team members. The competition also included a technical presentation about the robots design (programming and mechanical), and a presentation on a technical topic which varied every year. Here is a video of a girl’s team from this year … it shows how a typical robot, and a very good one at that … works! (video link for email subscribers)

Super Nerds In Pink (SNIP)