Tag Archives: MN North: Amity

Southbound Birding

Year 12

Stay tuned to learn if “boy birder” can find his feathered friends on his way south from near the Canadian border in northern Minnesota to the southern reaches of our beautiful country, Florida. He will escape the owl invasion of 2025, and hopefully discover new plumage power. This trip across our country from north to south will take 4 days, with a first stop in Green Bay Packer Country as he attempts to learn how three of his grandchildren ever came to be Cheeseheads.

Fact Check:

  • Bird Boy is almost 69 years old, but he still often acts like a little kid
  • The Owl Irruption will continue till at least March 1st. As crazy as this may seem, watching a Great Gray Owl is almost becoming boring. The key word here is “almost”.
  • This epic journey will be repeated later this month, Northbound Birding.
  • The journey begins now in the pre-dawn darkness of northern Minnesota. Les and Amy are hooting their love as I put the final items in our car.

Yard Bird Great Gray Owl!

Year 12

My wife, Molly (the non birder), noticed our visitor first. I have been telling friends I would consider this Winter an owl irruption in Northeastern Minnesota when and if we had a yard bird Great Gray Owl. This evening that historic event occurred! The photographs and video were taken after sunset.

I am actually falling way behind on potential posts. This afternoon in a little over one hour I saw five owls … including two species including a Boreal Owl. Regardless … Rich’s Yard Bird Great Gray Owl (video link for blog email subscribers)

And some still images of our visitor. In the final image, the owl did not move far but was no longer to obtain a contrast against the evening sky …

Amity Great Horned Owls Demand Equal Time!

Year 11,

Les and Amy are upset! After all they sing for me every night … a regular hoot fest. As we keep a window cracked open every night, I often hear the owls right from my own bed. Even though the mercury dipped to -13F last night, the famous pair sang while I listened all warm and snuggled up in my bed. Here is a 30 second sound clip I recorded a few mornings ago. The low sound in between hoots is actually Amity Creek, which given it was almost ice covered the sound was definitely just a quiet babbling brook (video/sound link for email subscribers)

Why were my local owls upset? They knew I had come home after photographing the “white owl!”. Yup, There are a couple of Snowy Owls in the Duluth area already this winter, and I quite often find one or two.

Snowy Owl Starting the Evening Hunt

Finally, I performed some format edits / updates very early this morning to the PDF of Northeastern Minnesota Birding Locations. The new vile (version 6) was uploaded and went live at 6 am CST. If you have the prior version (see file name), you may wish to download a new copy. There were no content changes. I have found reading the PDF works best in landscape mode on my phone.