Category Archives: Year 12

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.

Sunset to Sunrise Christmas Snowy Owl!

Year 12

This journey of the Christmas Snowy Owl started yesterday evening just before sunset, and continued during the the pre-dawn light this morning. Madam Snowy was VERY cooperative and often landed on hunting perches that were only 25 yards away.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from me and the birds!

One photographic hint … should you ever find yourself trying to photograph your subject, in this case a Snowy Owl, but a fence blocks your view. Place the lens of your camera immediately against the fence. The camera will adjust and take an “unobstructed” photo as if the fence is not even present! This is how I took the photo of the Snowy Owl on the ground.

Make certain you scroll down to the last image … taken right at sunup this morning.

Last night just before sunset … Snowy Owl

This morning before sunrise … same owl!

 

A Day for the Owls!

Year 12,

After a day and a half of fierce winds gusting of 45 mph, this morning dawned bright and calm (albeit cold at -9F). My comment is make certain you have a good weather app, and an app which is configurable to show you the hour by hour forecast as provided by the US Weather Service. I tend to focus upon cloud cover percentages, and wind speeds (basic and top gusts).

Thus, I knew the morning would be good in terms of finding my Northern Hawk Owl. After the poor weather it should be hungry (hunting was difficult) and willing to use perches out in the open (calm winds warmed by the sun). I met with success!

When the clouds started to roll in late this morning I headed home. However, my great day of birding was not over. Taking a break from the computer I walked out to our living room to read a book, but I became very distracted. A Barred Owl was only 25 years away from our window hunting squirrels underneath my feeders! Enjoy!

(video link for email subscribers)

My weather app, available for iPhone or Android is named Weawow.