Juvenile Morning: Great Gray Owls and Ospreys

Year 10

I did not plan to be gone for 7 hours when I left home shortly after 5 am yesterday morning, but when I was treated to a magical morning of birding …

Upon leaving the house I was presented with heavy fog upon climbing away from Lake Superior. Although I could not see much, only a few hundred yards, the fog ended up being a blessing in disguise. The dark, calm conditions were perfect for some Great Gray Owls I have been tracking since late Winter. The darkness meant the owls were still talking to each other when I arrived on location, and better yet in addition to all the hooting, there were now distinctive screeches coming from two different directions … owlets / juveniles!

I had almost given up hope of discovering a Great Gray Owl family. Mid August seemed way to late in the summer for younger juveniles, but just like my own local Great Horned Owls, raising families is running way late this year. Having had snow on the ground well into May in the deep forest, and lakes which did not go ice free till the middle of May obviously delayed nesting for many bird species.

Here are the four member of the Great Gray Owl family. You may ask how I am able to uniquely identify each member of the family. Each owl had a distinctive call, and was located in a slightly different direction from the other family members. The fog made photography difficult, but I am NOT complaining.

Juvenile Great Gray Owl #1 (owlet)

Juvenile Great Gray Owl #2 (owlet)

Screeching … the Movie (owlet)
(video link for email subscribers)

Momma Great Great Owl

Foreground: Mom — Background: Juvenile

Poppa Great Gray Owl

Eventually the fog burned off after a few hours, and I turned my focus to one of my local Osprey families. Over the past five days I have watched the two juvenile ospreys very closely. It is obvious they are ready to make their first flights, but are scared to make the first jump.

Thus, what is a Poppa Osprey supposed to do when your youngsters just refuse to take their first flight?? For this Dad it meant land with a fish, but take off very quickly w/o letting either of its two juveniles have a bite to eat. The parent osprey made this trip four times, never leaving the fish! Momma Osprey is to the far right, and the “two chicks” are in the middle.

Poppa Osprey Arrives … and Leaves Again Quickly
(video link for email subscribers)

Images of the happy osprey family

Tracking the Sun for Your Bird Outing: SunCalc

Background, Year 10, ,

I am enjoying a morning at home, as the rains finally arrived overnight and the weather is ugly outside, but such was not the case yesterday. The day dawned crystal clear and with the first hint of autumn. It was 39F on Admiral Road in Sax-Zim Bog at 6 am, and did not rise to 40F till after 7 am. I had an excellent morning, and enjoyed my route.

One very important aspect of any birding outing (or even just a longer hike in a local park) is knowing in advance where the sun will be located relative to your current or planned position. If you are visiting a new area, and slowly driving down a remote dirt road scanning for birds, if that road ends up tracking into the morning sun, your birding success will be poor. It is no fun on a birding hike or slow drive in your car to be staring directly into the sun. It makes it darn hard to see anything.

While I use an advanced app on my phone and tablet called PlanIt for Photographers, which allows me to not only know the sun’s and moon’s location on any given day (and time), or additional items like planning milky way photographs for a given time of night and learning where truly dark night time skies are located (and much more) … for most people an app of this nature is overkill. Thus in this post I am reviewing a free service you may use on computer (not phone) that easily allows you to plan your own outings, and is free! The service is named SunCalc.Org.

SunCalc allows the user to accomplish the basics, but arguably the most important task … where will the sun be located relative to a given (or expected) location at some time in the future.

SunCalc.Org (basic or entry screen upon loading web page)

The Red Arrows and White Numbering & Text are my Annotations!

Map Layers

Zoom In and Out & Location

Time of Day Slider

Select Date

Selected Menu Options

Once again, SunCalc provides only the basics, but it does a good job and has an easy to learn interface. Happy birding.

Sunflowers at Sunrise!

Year 10

We are having a mini family reunion up here in the Northland. I offered to lead folks on an outing early yesterday morning. I would not reveal the focus of our jaunt, other than to promise it would involve bursts of color, and was not a birding expedition (not everyone birds in my family!).

When we arrived at the humble sunflower fields during the early morning light, there were exclamations of joy. We spent over 90 minutes enjoying and walking in the midst of the sunflowers. Our location was Matten Road in Wrenshall … a delight for the senses. Here is the Google Maps link. We were visiting MK3 Hardwood Farm (Facebook page). The sunflowers are just coming into their own in terms of blossoms. Birding will be better next week.

Molly and I wish you a joyous rest of the summer. Note in the photograph of the two of us how the sky had become much less blue. The combination of being 90 minutes later in the morning, plus smoke building into the area dramatically changed photographs. However, before planning this outing I had taken into account which morning would have a lesser amount of smoke at sunrise. Happy August!

A number of folks have asked me privately and via the comments how I am able to forecast the smoke. There is one tool from the National Weather Service … linked via this url. It only forecasts the smoke a little over 24 hours in advance.

Here is a screenshot. Select the “vertical smoke” from the left menu, and then use the two sliders … one changes the forecast period, the other changes the ability to see through the “smoke overlays” to the map below.