Category Archives: Year 10

Berry Birds of the Northland

Year 10

During September and October I often drive the backroads of Minnesota looking for Mountain Ash, Crabapple and believe it or not … Buckthorn Trees. While these fruit trees may be devoid of birds in the Fall, I know these locations will “bare fruit” (sorry for the pun) both in the winter, and early Spring.

Today I found Pine Grosbeaks in a crabapple tree. A few days back it was Bohemian Waxwings gorging themselves on buckthorn berries. While the Minnesota DNR for understandable reasons despises buckthorns, fruit eating birds would beg to differ. Thus in the winter I check back at fruit trees, and in the Spring these same trees will attract birds with their blossoms (the blossoms of some fruit trees are edible, and the same blossoms attract bugs).

Both of these birds have been a somewhat difficult find this winter, which is why my Autumn pre-work is important.

Pine Grosbeaks

Bohemian Waxwings

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!