I normally would never see Momma Great Horned Owl out hunting around 4 pm … long before sunset, but when you have two hungry juvenile owlets to feed sometimes one just does NOT get to sleep as long as desired (yesterday in the Lester / Amity Forest on the northern edge of Duluth). Sound familiar parents?! As an additional fyi, the chickadees would not leave her along.
Cuckoo Quest 2023!
It’s almost here! Excitement reigns in the Northland. Cuckoo Quest 2023 will be this Friday morning! Yes, your intrepid Northwoods birder will brave the Wisconsin Grasslands in search of the Black-Billed Cuckoo! Is this a quest for a person who is cuckoo? No! My thanks as always to the Wisconsin DNR and their annual Cuckoo Population Survey. The area inside the map has lots of cuckoos, with GPS locations! Thank you Wisco DNR in advance for providing me a great morning of birding. The area has numerous other grassland birds and wildflowers. I look forward every year to Cuckoo Quest. It is a delight for the senses.
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Here is a link to the eBird data. You “may” need an eBird account for the data to load. You definitely will need to zoom in on NW Wisconsin. The data is for Black-Billed Cuckoos seen in June of this year. The “dotted arrows” are my driving route.
Here are three photographs I’ve taken over the past few days … Grassland Birds!
Dickcissel
Bobolink
Eastern Kingbird (and dragonfly)
The Return of FuzzBall!
Well sort of! FuzzBall now requires me to hike approximately a mile in the Lester / Amity Forest and Search for the owlet. Yesterday evening I found both owlets hanging out in a tall white pine tree. As always I took a few photographs.
My daughter when she tries to get good pictures of her four children makes the promise that if the kids are good, they are allowed to make a “goofy face” for the final photo. FuzzBall the Great Horned Owlet and I used the same approach.
The serious young owlet image
The goof ball pic
In addition, I finally had time to process two videos of the owlets which I took a little over one week ago on the day the owlets had their big reunion … FuzzBall and Junior Together Again (video links for email subscribers: one | two)