Monthly Archives: February 2023

Snowy Owl Moonrise!

Year 10

There are special evenings in life. One of which was last night as I watched the full moon rise behind a Snowy Owl at the beginning of its evening hunt. The images are just one camera exposure each, not a combination of multiple images. Trying to get the moon and the owl both in focus was an extreme challenge. The slow shutter speeds I needed to utilize to capture enough light forced blurring difficulties as the moon is actually moving quite fast. The color of the moon changes as it rises in the sky because there is less atmospheric dust to shine through (As the moon rose I was changing my position relative to the owl to keep the moon and the owl in the same frame). Finally I have included the final image BECAUSE it is dark and demonstrates I do NOT use flash for night photography of owls.

My favorite photograph from last night is the third image. For over a year I have been trying to capture a Snowy Owl against the full moon rising. There is only about 20 minutes of effective photography time, and that assumes I have first found a Snowy Owl right before dark (and it stays in place) and then have totally clear skies and a full moon.

Where For Art Thou Birding?

Year 10

In my case, it is somewhere near the Sylvania Wilderness in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In the past I have posted to this blog about “Off the Grid” Birding and “Google Maps Offline. I practice what I preach, and yesterday afternoon when I went out exploring I more often than not had zero connectivity, but I still had maps showing me my exact location. If you ever bird in remote areas, even if you have connectivity the entire time, you SHOULD review this post of mine on the use of offline tools which help prevent you from getting lost.

I didn’t find many birds during my outing, but I had fun! Even eBird had zero entries during any winter for the area in which I was located. Given my total lack of knowledge about the Ottawa National Forest, it made it difficult to find winter food sources.

My Location

A Blue Jay!

Birding 365!

Year 10

It’s hard to believe this first day of February finds me ten years into providing my web service for the birding community. In addition, you will find nary an advertisement on this site. My knowledge, good or bad, is a gift to you. Regardless, 10 years is a long time and I realized additional organizational work was required to make using 365 Days of Birds easier. Thank you for your over 500k of page views over the years.

This post reviews my web site’s services section by section …

Tags: Extensively reworked. Every tag that is a birding location now has a state or country aspect therein. On a PC, the tags appear in the right column and by hovering over an individual tag with your mouse you may discover the number of entries w/o clicking. In addition there are special tags such as: Bicycle Birding, Birding Know How, Northern Lights, etc. While browsing this web site via a mobile device, the tags will appear in various locations depending upon your screen size.

Main Menu: Easily find really important stuff. Whether on a mobile device or PC this menu appears on every web page or blog post.

  • Home: Always takes you back to the root page or home.
  • About Rich Hoeg: The subject of this section should be obvious!
  • Birding KnowHow & Evals: An index of blog posts on birding knowledge and reviews
  • Free Owl Books: I am a children’s book author, and I give away PDF downloads of my books. Follow this link to learn more about my local owl family and their book.
  • Mn Birding Locations: I have my favorite birding spots in Northeastern Minnesota. This web pages has descriptions of those locations and Google Maps links. There is a free PDF download available for this page.
  • Northern Lights: Northern Minnesota is one the best locations to watch the Aurora Borealis in the Continental 48. Learn more about this super sight!
  • Subscribe: This link will allow you to subscribe to my blog posts via email or RSS.

Search Engine: I built a custom search engine using Google for this site. Search for content or images. Location varies based upon the mobile device or PC which you utilize for browsing. Will always be in a margin area, not embedded in a page or post content.

Archive: Ten years is a long time … and a lot of posts and pages. Pull up any month over the past ten years. If you are visiting the Northland this can be helpful as it will tell you what I was birding during that point of the year. I use this section myself, often pulling up months from multiple years (three Octobers for instance) to remind myself what good birding is coming up on the calendar.

Remember Snoopy’s Happy Dance? This Common Loon is happy with 365 Days of Birds! I hope you find the site / service valuable.

Learn more about this web site and its content: 365DaysOfBirds.com