Category Archives: Background

Planning Your Migration Birding: BirdCast and HaikuBox

Background, Year 10

The southern migration has started. The bug eating birds are exiting the Northwoods. No matter where you live in North America, it is possible to discover / learn what to expect in terms of the migration. For my purposes I am focusing upon northern Minnesota which equates to the Duluth area and St. Louis County. However, you can use the same approach for wherever you call home or are located.

BirdCast: Use this tool from the Cornell School of Ornithology (and others) on your computer or mobile device to learn what is happening in terms of migration over the next few days. Remember, a wind pushing birds in their desired direction, just like a tailwind on a bicycle, means more birds will be moving. We all like to use less energy to move the same distance. See my full review of BirdCast with annotated screenshots.

Here are two screenshots from BirdCast taken this Saturday morning, August 26th for the migration that occurred last night, and for two days hence when the winds will once again be out of the North for Duluth … located in St. Louis County, Minnesota.

I also mention HaikuBox may be used to figure out what is migrating. Read my full review of HaikuBox, but remember this small box identifies the birds singing in your yard in real time and saves that data. As I mentioned in my full review, anyone may obtain a free HaikuBox account for use on a computer or mobile device and view the data from public HaikuBoxes across the United States and Canada. (Link to my own HaikuBox Data Stream)

The way to use HaikuBox for migration information is easy. Use the map on their website (Listen.Haikubox.Com) and pick Haikuboxes north of your own location and bookmark them. At any time, you may then visit those Haikuboxes and discover what ACTUAL birds are visiting the geographic locations in question.

Thus, I have chosen and bookmarked for my purposes and account four Haikuboxes … one in Grand Marais, Minnesota … two on the Gunflint Trail … and one box on Lake Winnipeg.

A Screenshot of the HaikuBox Map for my Region

Using one’s free Haikubox Account … on a PC or Mobile Device … check what’s happening for a given period

One final item in closing out this post. In my full review I talk about how I had purchased my own HaikuBox. However, a college classmate of mine, Jim Ancona, who is also a techie and a retired software engineer built the equivalent of his own Haikubox … a Do It Yourself (DIY) project. The cost is less that what I spent, and the result is similar! Read how Jim built his own bird listening device:

Here is a screenshot from Jim’s area and his Birdsong Device.

Finally a special callout to another one of my buddies, and I am throwing the gauntlet down. Paul with your amazing Wood Duck Drop monitoring tech, I totally expect you to follow in Jim’s footsteps!

Tracking the Sun for Your Bird Outing: SunCalc

Background, Year 10, ,

I am enjoying a morning at home, as the rains finally arrived overnight and the weather is ugly outside, but such was not the case yesterday. The day dawned crystal clear and with the first hint of autumn. It was 39F on Admiral Road in Sax-Zim Bog at 6 am, and did not rise to 40F till after 7 am. I had an excellent morning, and enjoyed my route.

One very important aspect of any birding outing (or even just a longer hike in a local park) is knowing in advance where the sun will be located relative to your current or planned position. If you are visiting a new area, and slowly driving down a remote dirt road scanning for birds, if that road ends up tracking into the morning sun, your birding success will be poor. It is no fun on a birding hike or slow drive in your car to be staring directly into the sun. It makes it darn hard to see anything.

While I use an advanced app on my phone and tablet called PlanIt for Photographers, which allows me to not only know the sun’s and moon’s location on any given day (and time), or additional items like planning milky way photographs for a given time of night and learning where truly dark night time skies are located (and much more) … for most people an app of this nature is overkill. Thus in this post I am reviewing a free service you may use on computer (not phone) that easily allows you to plan your own outings, and is free! The service is named SunCalc.Org.

SunCalc allows the user to accomplish the basics, but arguably the most important task … where will the sun be located relative to a given (or expected) location at some time in the future.

SunCalc.Org (basic or entry screen upon loading web page)

The Red Arrows and White Numbering & Text are my Annotations!

Map Layers

Zoom In and Out & Location

Time of Day Slider

Select Date

Selected Menu Options

Once again, SunCalc provides only the basics, but it does a good job and has an easy to learn interface. Happy birding.

The Forest Reborn

Background, Year 10
The Forest Reborn!
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I just wrote and photographed an article on this topic for the just published issue of Lake Country Journal. Although wildfire can and is often tragic, the article reviews the benefits of fire to our ecosystem. Our forests need to burn to stay healthy. My story includes research and interviews with The Nature Conservancy of Minnesota, the Minnesota DNR, one of the world’s leading experts in forest health from the University of Minnesota, Professor Lee Frelich, and Outdoor Writer and Photographer, Michael Furtman who owns a cabin right in the middle to the Greenwood Forest Fire region.
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Here is a photograph I took near the end of the Gunflint Trail. The location is the overlook near Gunflint Lake and the image was taken during the summer of 2020, 13 years after the Ham Lake Fire … beautiful once more.
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This is what the region looked like from the same exact location just four years after the fire in 2011.

Forest Fire Rebirth at Gunflint Lake
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