Category Archives: Year 7

Birding and Biking on Hold

Year 7

Just a brief update on Tuesday, October 20th. I will have surgery to either repair or replace a defective heart valve tomorrow morning. Otherwise, my heart checked out fine via various other tests yesterday. Thanks for everyone’s best wishes and prayers. My prognosis is good, and I hope to post again this coming weekend. I will photograph and review the varius birdfeeders I use, and why …

Till then.

Hospital Birds

Year 7
Surreal. Being awakened at 3 am in a hospital bed because the battery on your heart monitor has failed. As I slowly woke up I found myself looking up into the eyes of a nurse with a flashlight. The reason for the heart monitor and hospital, I have problems. Thursday afternoon I collapsed / blacked out while trail running (Oct. 14). After recovering enough while lying on the ground, with the help of a Good Samaritan I was able to hike slowly down to the Lester Playground parking lot. After an ambulance ride to hospital I am now in St. Mary’s (Duluth) having had many tests, with more tests on Monday. Heart surgery is almost a certainty in the near future. Posts will be few and far between for a while.
Shortly before my ill fated trail run, I took these images in my own yard. The Red-Bellied Woodpecker had been violently attacking another Red-Bellied all morning … defending my suet feeder.
This rare northern bird down from the Arctic also showed up to hunt songbirds … a Northern Shrike.

From three years ago exactly … saving Silver.

GPS Solar Array Bird Tracking

Year 7

The winter owling season approaches, and with that time of year many of us look forward to learning more about various owl species. Over the past several years Project Snowstorm has used small GPS Solar Array powered tracking bands to measure exactly where Snowy Owls go from their time in the northern United States to the Arctic for summer breeding. When a Snowy finally flies near a cell tower, even if months have passed, the owl phones home and its data is downloaded. Newer devices often communicate daily via satellite upload.

This winter we hope to put some of these high tech banding devices on Northern Hawk Owls (the owl on my banner). Are hawk owls breeding in Minnesota far from any roads deep in Bogs, or are our friends heading somewhere up in Canada (our best guess). The next question would be where are our winter owls breeding?

Here are some screenshots from eBird which track Snowy Owl reportings (not data downloads from Project Snowstorm). The screenshots demostrate how Snowies disappear from view during their migration … in the vast Canadian wilderness, but eventually reappear at which point their data tracks are downloaded.

October 2020 (Oct. 1 to 16 … essentially no owls)

October 2019 (entire month)

November 2019 (entire month)