Arctic birds from the tundra were arriving this morning! Snow Buntings were almost falling out of the sky in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Close behind were Horned Larks, which I affectionately know as the “Fu Manchu Bird!” (see a photo to learn why)

Here is a screenshot from Google Maps which I annotated. Take notice where the Tundra, Boreal Forest and the Plains / Prairie are located in comparison to each of these bird’s range maps, but particularly their breeding locations up in the Arctic (range maps courtesy of Cornell’s School of Ornithology: Snow Bunting & Horned Lark). Neither of these bird species knows how to forage well for food in the Boreal Forest. It’s not their habitat. Two Harbors, and specifically the RV Campground (now closed for the year) is one of the first open spaces they find while migrating along the shores of Lake Superior and through the Boreal Forest. Food!!! (i.e. in the campground’s grassy areas).

Basically, I planted myself at the campground and waited for flocks of birds to come to me. Hungry birds make for birds which are easier to approach. It was a fun morning.

Horned Larks

The Fu Manchu Bird

Snow Buntings

A Post Processing Exercise: You may need to download both of these images and then toggle back and forth between them on your computer. Folks often ask how much post processing I perform (not much), but minor edits and cropping can make a difference. Normally if I make I minor crops, I stay with the photographs’ original dimensions. Take a look at these two images which started from the same original. In the first photograph I utilized a longer and shorter crop (16:9). My goal was to eliminate some of the grassy area above and below the birds which really does not help the artistic presentation of the photograph/birds. The second photograph utilized a minor crop with the standard dimensions … thus narrower and higher. The size of the birds does not really change between the two images. Thus, it’s more about what I wanted to exclude in the first image rather than having an editing goal to increase the size of the birds.

Ever have one of those days? You are just walking down the beach when …

This is what happens when a Ross’s Goose meets a Canada Goose (yesterday afternoon on a Lake Superior Beach). The white goose is rare for our area.

Just walking down the beach … when …

If I ignore it and look the other way, maybe it will go away

Oh my … it is a lot bigger than me

As Snagglepuss would say … exit stage left! Time to fly

You should remember previous posts which mention the Cornell School of Ornithology’s app, Merlin. This app was very useful this afternoon when I needed to ID a white goose. The bird had to be a Ross’s or Snow Goose … both rare for this part of North America, but which one?? Merlin allows one to request an ID using a photograph of the bird which you upload.

Thanks to Merlin I know that the white goose was a Ross’s Goose, not a Snow Goose. These birds look very similar. Some other birding notes from today:

• Snow buntings are starting to appear in decent numbers along the roadsides north of Duluth
• Strong winds out of the north the past few days have spurred on the migration of truly “northern birds”. An amazing number of purple finches are hanging out at my feeders, and the first Snowy Owl in the Lower 48 was seen in northern Wisconsin.