All posts by richardhoeg@gmail.com

Snowy Owls at the Rodeo and WWII Airplane Museum!

Year 12

Okay … this post will make it obvious that there are Snowy Owls in Superior. I had a great time two days before Christmas, and one Snowy Owl in particular was taking in the tourist sights!

In addition, observe the Snowy stretching its neck while perched on the airport lights. A reader asked in the comments of a prior post about “neck stretching”. This is a common behavior of owls and is normally indicative of prey in sight, or that the owl is about to move hunting perches.

First the Snowy Owl went to the Rodeo (perched on lights)

Then the Owl checked out the World War II Airbird!

It’s finally hunting perch was much more mundane … airport lights

Flight of the Northern Hawk Owl

Year 12

Earlier this week I was privileged to spend more than an hour by myself watching this Northern Hawk Owl hunt. The bird has now been discovered by a few other birders, and while it is nice that other folks get to see this majestic owl, I will miss my “personal” sessions. Remember, this bird is my Sparkbird. Thus, there can NEVER be too many photos of the NHO!

Flight of the Northern Hawk Owl

Other images from “the hunt”

Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center Birdsong Listening Station

Year 12

The BirdNET-Pi birdsong listening station at the Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center is now live, and the station ID’s birdsongs 24x7x365. You may easily listen along with the station! The web interface defaults to the most recent 24 hours, but with a tiny bit of effort you may select a custom time period … the prior 7 days, prior 30 days, etc. This listening device is just part of the initial phase of many, many units (some online and available to the public) which which will be deployed across northeastern Minnesota. I am the lead field techie guy for this effort! While cell phones will connect to the stations, I have personally found reasonably fast tablets and desktop computers / laptops work much better.

Here is the direct link to the Welcome Center’s Birdsong Listening Station. However, I recommend you browse to this webpage on my blog which includes links to five additional stations and detailed listening usage instructions including annotated screenshots.

This screenshot is from the other post. The stations are NOT linked below, but are linked via the other post.