Yesterday, I spent a delightful morning in Sax-Zim Bog. How else might one describe a day with deep blue skies, calm winds and 44F?! The two week stretch of -175F weather got old! I took lots of hikes, and was surprised to learn how much snow has melted in the forest. My main reason for heading over to the Bog was to say goodbye for another year to the grosbeaks. Within days all of the Pine Grosbeaks should be gone and on their way up to the northern fringes of the Boreal Forest in Canada. I actually felt lucky to find two females.

The Evening Grosbeaks will hang around for a week or two longer. While a few will stay and breed in northern Minnesota, most will migrate north to the mid Boreal Forest up in Canada.

I also enjoyed some time with a few Gray Jays … a year round bird in northern Minnesota, and now Canada’s national bird (official new name … Canada Jay)

Finally, this morning I was out of the house shortly after 6 am in search of Great Gray Owls. I struck out 100%. The melting snow and time of year means it’s time for these owls to leave the roadsides where they hunt “meadow voles” and head deep back into the forest … to raise a new family and munch on “red backed voles” all summer.

Our cold weather continues. It was -16F (-27F) when I got up this morning. The long range temperature forecast shows overnight lows in the “double digits” below zero for the next seven days. We are now five days into the current cold weather. If the forecasts hold true, that makes for a 12 day polar vortex.

Given lower winds this morning, I decided I needed to get out birding … even if it meant staying close to the car for warmth reasons. I visited Sax-Zim Bog which is 45 minutes from my home. My two target birds were Pine Grosbeaks and a Northern Hawk Owl. The grosbeaks were easy to find. The owl eluded me.

Tonight I need to convince myself to take a hike as the temperature plummets long after sundown. My local Great Horned Owls nested on February 8th last year (two days ago if on the same timeline as last year). My female has stopped singing as she may be on whatever nest the couple has selected. The male still sings nightly. It’s hard to convince oneself to go hiking in the dark even with full thermal wear keeping me somewhat warm. Waiting at home for the “nightly sing” and then heading out has not worked real well. By the time I hike over to the “owling grounds” the happy couple goes silent making nest triangulation difficult. I have hiked over a number of nights in advance hoping for “hoot song” at a given time of night. Those efforts have been failures. When it is -10F or colder with a decent wind, hanging around in the middle of the forest doing nothing while awaiting the evening sing (i.e. motionless … thus no body heat being generated) is a cool experience.

This winter’s finch invasion continues. I had fun watching both Evening and Pine Grosbeaks at the Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center this morning, but struck out while hiking / listening for Black-Backed Woodpeckers at Winterberry Bog. I can never get enough of Evening Grosbeaks, When I was a young child these birds religiously invaded our Duluth yard every winter. In ten years at my own Duluth home I have never had a single one of these yellow birds … bummer.

Recently I created a couple of northern Minnesota birding excursion pamphlets (PDF’s) for a friend who manages the South Pier Inn (he wants the PDF’s for his guests). The work was done as a favor; thus I want my own readers to have the opportunity to utilize my work: (all three docs are PDF’s)

• Finding Snowy Owls in Superior
• A Birding Excursion to Sax-Zim Bog (download also the accompanying map)

Finally I would like to answer two questions submitted by some readers …

• Marla asks: Out of curiosity what are you using to organize your photos?

I actually do not use any service, be it Flicker, SmugMug, GooglePhotos, etc. There are a number of reasons.

1. 1. I like to be in charge of my own images and MANY services downgrade your image quality upon upload.
   2. My images (actually every file new or edited on my entire hard drive) are backed up nightly to an external hard drive
   3. I use  basic naming conventions for ease of search via my hard drive.
      • Images are saved in folders with logical names (such as Night Skies)
      • My filenames always include a geographic reference, a bird ID (or descriptive name such as ship, freighter, or ore boat), and finally any other relevant important information (such as flight, take-off, prey, dawn, seasmoke, etc). Thus my filenames can get rather long but ave keywords that facilitate searches.

• Tommy asks: I like my camera but find the wifi is inoperative I in controlling shots from iPhone to assist with feeder pictures. Do you have any comments on that?

1. 1. While I use a different camera than Tommy, I do “not” use wifi and any accompanying camera manufacturer apps to control the taking of photographs. There are a number of reasons:
      • Wifi usage by a camera is a real battery life hog. Living in a cool climate such as northern Minnesota insures I pay attention to this fact.
      • Anytime I actually tested a “wifi shutter release” I found the latency to be extremely slow. Thus, using wifi controls not only negatively affected my battery life, but also meant missed photo opportunities. By the time I pressed “shutter release” in an app, and the connection was passed along to my camera’s shutter release by wifi or bluetooth, the action I wanted to record was long in the past.
      • I prefer to sit or kneel near bird feeders or in gardens (never stand … birds find that action threatening but may put up with you given the lower profile of sitting or kneeling).