Hoot’s First Summer!

Year 7

Before my unexpected vacation in the hospital, I was hard at work at a summer update on the Great Horned Owl family. I hope you enjoy Hoot’s First Summer! The book was not strictly speaking created to be a children’s picture book, but I am certain people of all ages will enjoy the story of the triplet’s first summer.

This book is ONLY available as a free PDF. Printed copies are not available. Thus, the book is a gift from Hoot to you! Enjoy. Don’t miss the video’s beneath the photograph of Hoot.

Hoot panting to beat the Heat on a 90+ Fahrenheit day. (link for email subscribers)

Hoot begging for food outside my bedroom window at 3 am (link for email subscribers)

Crows! (link for email subscribers)

Arctic Arrivals

Year 7

Each day I feel a tiny bit better, and my family insures they take me out for some “birding by car” with very short hikes. As I noted yesterday, I have been looking for my first Pine Grosbeak of the season, which means checking out pygmy crabapple trees. I struck paydirt this morning and watched one lone female. Not a single pine grosbeak was seen in Minnesota last winter. There was plenty of food north of the border, and they never came south.

Shortly thereafter I had fun watching a few flocks of Snow Buntings followed by an amazing hunting session with my favorite hawk, a Rough Legged Hawk. These hawks are only one of two raptors (other than owls) that have feathers all the way down to their talons. Thus,  Rough Legged Hawks are adapted for their breeding seasons up by the Arctic Ocean. This bird let me get amazingly close. Normally Roughies spook very easily.

It was a great morning. One of my snow buntings (video link for email subscribers)

Rusty Blackbird

Year 7

I went looking for Pine Grosbeaks at some old berry / crabapple farms and found instead one of the birds of the Boreal Forest which is unfortunately experiencing the greatest population drop of any kind of bird in North America. Rusty Blackbirds breed up in the Boreal Forest swamps north of the border in Canada, and we occasionally see them here in northern Minnesota during their southern migration. Their population drop has been estimated at 85 to 99 percent over the past 40 years. Hopefully they are not a “canary in coal mine”.