The sun made a brief appearance a bit after sunrise yesterday morning. The brightening day revealed that danger had stalked the forest fog, and my local crow population was not pleased. During the damp semi darkness the male Great Horned Owl had obviously made a kill and delivered it to its mate on the nest. I heard the crow’s racket from my house even over the sound of the waterfall. I hiked over to the nest and I found Poppa Owl guarding the nest while Mom ate. In addition Mom GHO is obviously being bumped around by hungry owlets underneath her.

Poppa Great Horned Owl on Guard

Mom having Breakfast (video link for email subscribers)

The Cornell School of Ornithology has weighed in an has stated there is very little risk to songbirds from folks keeping their bird feeders filled:

There is currently very low risk of an outbreak among wild songbirds, and no official recommendation to take down feeders unless you also keep domestic poultry, according to the National Wildlife Disease Program. We will update this page as the situation develops.

Given both the Wisconsin and Minnesota DNR Departments are also not recommending taking down bird feeders, I resumed filling my feeders yesterday. By this morning I am back to having 200+ songbirds in the yard at one time, mainly migrating redpolls.

Yesterday I also spotted these two birds in the yard, even though they would never visit my feeders.

Brown Creeper

Fox Sparrow

A few other notes …

• The Lester River Kayak Race is this afternoon starting at 3:30 pm. While it would be an easy hike over to watch, given the current weather is 37F, a thunderstorm and sleety hard rain, I will remain inside unless things change significantly for the better.
• White Pelicans returned to Chambers Grove in Duluth a few days ago. The walleye spawn on the St. Louis River must be starting. The numbers of pelicans is still somewhat small.
• If the rain stops today, or at least lets up, a good birding spot from the car will be the Park Point Recreation Area. The little bay by the sailing club / boat launch will have a huge number of ducks and swans. There is NO WAY any bird will migrate into this NE wind off Lake Superior. Given all the inland lakes are still iced over, the bary represents some of the only open water to shelter and eat.

The winter that will not end could have been a title for this post. Thankfully Molly and I missed most of the snow melt with our trip to Tucson. When we left and drove south Molly had to listen to my constant complaints that I was going to miss seeing my owls at their youngest age. I even talked about flying back from Tucson for a couple day visit to see the youngsters. Was I ever wrong. This morning during my birding hike, Mom Great Horned Owl was being bumped around, but the owlets were still warmly ensconced underneath her. One year ago exactly from today, last year’s family of owlets were already branching and even beginning to think about flight.

Last year on April 22nd …

I had speculated that the extremely cold winter might have slowed down the nesting process for my owls. Last year the owls nested on February 8th; this year I found the nest on March 11th (the owls may have nested earlier). Yesterday evening’s photograph was taken essentially two weeks AFTER the same date that the owlets were branching last year.

This year on April 21st … (white fuzz / fluff viewable just in front of Mom)

Here is the U.S. Weather Service data for this year. Given the cold weather, I suspect Mom owl needed to use much of her energy for just staying warm, and not egg production. In addition to the 20 inches of snow we’ve had in April this year, here is the temperature data for this winter … the delta averages are HUGE! (vs 30 year average)

• January: 6.5 degrees below normal
• February: 9.5 degrees below normal
• March: 2.9 degrees below normal
• April: 5 degrees below normal through April 20th

Finally, here are two final pics of “southern Mama”. She left her nest in the Tucson area 2.5 weeks ago to help her mate hunt for food to feed hungry owlets. Notice how the southern desert owl is almost gray in color, while northern mom is much more brown. It appears both birds have evolved to better fit in with their habitat (camouflage).