Folks like to see “northern” birds, and for that opportunity they could charter a bush pilot and fly into a remote lake near the Arctic Ocean, or they could visit Duluth in the late fall and winter. In a little over a month the visitor center at Sax-Zim Bog will open for the winter. I look forward to another winter of helping out at the center as a volunteer naturalist.
In the meantime one may enjoy the late fall migration along the north shore of Lake Superior. In the past few days I have enjoyed watching:
- Hundreds & hundreds of Slate Colored Juncos
- Large numbers of
- Horned Larks
- Lapland Longspurs
- Snow Buntings
- American Tree Sparrows
- One Ross’s Goose (Park Point Recreation Fields)
- Many, many Merlins chasing songbirds for breakfast
- One Short Eared Owl (dune grasslands while hiking out to the Superior Entry)
- At my own feeder:
- Woodpeckers … Downy, Hairy, Red-Bellied, and Pilleated
- Finches … Purple and Gold
- Chickadees and Nuthatches (red and white breasted)
- Mourning Doves
- Juncos
- White-Crowned Sparrows
- Fox Sparrows
- Cardinals
- A Gray Fox (15 minutes under the feeders eating 50 minutes before sunrise)
Here are a few images from the past two days … a video of the snow buntings is included.
Ross’s Goose
Merlin (imitating a turkey … don’t think the songbirds were fooled!)
Lapland Longspur (just a few minutes after sunrise)
Snow Buntings
Slate-Colored Juncos
