See part one of this series for the video! I promised there would be a second post about my over two hours watching a Northern Hawk Owl hunt yesterday, New Year’s Day. Remember, if it is not obvious, the Northern Hawk Owl is my blog’s featured bird. The banner for this website for over ten years has always been this tiny owl.

This collection of hawk owl photographs may be more than you folks, my loyal readers want, but I want to post the images! Learn more about the Northern Hawk Owl courtesy of the Cornell School of Ornithology, but back to my story. In total yesterday I took well over 350 photographs of this bird, and a bunch of videos.

Northern Hawk Owl in the Minnesota Boreal Forest (not Sax-Zim Bog)

To lead off here are three images … taken almost at the same time, but different zoom treatments. Notice how the feel of the photograph changes. I tend to better like images that include habitat, rather than extreme close-ups.

And now rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say … Wikipedia link.

2025 started out extra special. After listening to Les and Amy hoot during the pre-dawn dark hours of the morning I left with a friend to go birding. As you may know, the Northern Hawk Owl is my blog’s signature bird. Oh my, did the New Year have a treat in store for me. Not only did the owl put on a hunting show for us, the forecast clouds disappeared for a brief time and blue skies / sun made an appearance.

I will lead with this video. While watching the video it should be obvious that not only was I amazingly close to the owl, but it could care less about me. I ever approached the Northern Hawk Owl, but it decided that the dead white bird near where I was standing was a great hunting platform. It flew own and landed next to me! 2025 will be a fantastic birding year if this owl is any indication! (video link for blog email subscribers)

Here are two photographs I took this morning while the Northern Hawk Owl was hunting. I spent over two hours watching the owl, and it was still hunting when I left because the 12F temperature and brisk wind was chilling me … at least for me if not the owl.

This will be a two part blog post. I have only edited a couple of all the images I took this morning. Happy New Year!

On Wednesday I drove and birded Hedbom Forest Road near Floodwood. This birding spot is one of my NE Minnesota Birding Locations and part of the free PDF of birding locations you may download / use on your mobile device.

Hedbom is wunderbar! I’m not certain how much longer this forest road will continue to be drivable this winter as snow will get deeper, but for the moment if you are in the vicinity of Floodwood, Minnesota check it out. One need only drive the first 3.5 miles from the gate to see the best habitat. While I did not find any owls (I was hoping I might find a hawk owl) I did find hundreds and hundreds of Common Redpolls. These birds are invading NE Minnesota this winter. Right now they are not visiting feeders, but later in the winter that equation will change. For the moment they are finding lots of natural food in the forest.

While many of these images may look like you are seeing the same bird, in actuality about 300 redpolls were gritting up right in front on my car, and I knew they would fly to a particular dead tree to clean their beaks.

Common Redpoll … Incoming!

And More Redpolls and Lichen