It’s was ugly outside early this morning … the temperature hovered around 40F, NE winds were steady at 25 mph with occasional gusts to 40 mph, and rain … thus the fearful 40’s. Now some folks would think these are horrible birding conditions, but those people would be wrong. Instead given the northern migration which is in progress, I knew there were good probabilities to see birds I would not normally find. The ugly conditions would convince birds to hide from the wind and pause their migration. Just like when bicycling, who wants to expend all the energy to fight a fierce headwind.

The key to successful birding on days of this nature is to understand the weather, the current date in the migration and your local habitat. Thus, I dressed for the weather and went out to the Park Point Recreation Area (big sand spit / dune which forms the Duluth harbor). The playing fields were under lots of water, and in addition to all the ring-billed gulls, I found some gulls and terms migrating up to the Arctic / northern Canada. Enjoy.

Courting Bonapart’s Gulls

Caspian Terns

The two types of birds jointly in one image