Friends Don’t Let Birds Fly Drunk!

It is the season for drunk birds. We’ve had cold weather including snow and significantly sub freezing temperatures. The end result is the Mountain Ash berries when birds eat them tend to ferment in their gullets. As a young boy I would watch drunk Evening Grosbeaks in our yard. Today I found drunk Robins. Hundreds, if not thousands of Robins were migrating down the North Shore of Lake Superior. At the mouth of the French River there was an extremely popular Mountain Ash tree. Here are a few images:

Underneath the tree I found this Swainson’s Thrush. As first I thought it was picking up sloppy seconds (berries knocked off the tree by all the Robins). However the thrush proved me wrong by finding a nice juicy grub.

My morning actually started up at Sax-Zim Bog. While the Tamarack Pine needles were golden, the birds were not in evidence except these few wild turkeys.

McDavitt Crossing

Wild Turkeys

The rest of the “fall color” photographs are from my own yard and were taken yesterday afternoon. It was a gloomy day, but I finally got some bright clouds.

Blue Jay … White Throated Sparrow … White Crowned Sparrow … Dark Eyed Junco … Fox Sparrow

200k Views Coming Soon!

A bit under five years ago, on January 23, 2014 on my wife’s birthday I started this blog. Sometime within the next few weeks I will hit the magic number of 200,000 views. I find this number amazing!

I need to figure out how to celebrate when this mark is achieved. I welcome suggestions via this post’s comments. At a bare minimum, I have some coasters which incorporate my photos which I will have to figure out how to give away!

And here is the first photograph I ever posted to my blog … Riley the Snowy Owl!

Roadside Ditch Birding!

It does not sound glamorous … roadside ditch birding. Folks talk about taking exotic birding trips to Costa Rica or the Texas barrier islands during spring migration … and where do I bird? Ditches!

Actually my approach makes great sense and is quite productive. After days of rain, and multiple stormy weather days, the ditches hold both water and bugs. Given there is now snow on the ground to our north and west, and overnight lows routinely are down in the 20’s inland from Lake Superior, these ditches represent food to starving, migrating birds. Our weather has caught the late migrants by surprise. Our normal highs for this time of year are 53F. Lately we are lucky if a day tops out at 40F.

The other present birding advantage is starving birds let you get very, very close. While in the spring and summer I need to know habitat, all I need right now for a successful birding excursion is my bicycle which allows me to go slowly and then stop to observe.

All Roadside Ditch Birdsphotographed from just a few feet distant:

Wilson’s Snipe

American Redstart (at my feet)

Yellow-Rumped Warbler (and in a pine)

Not in a ditch, but a large group for these parts … Snow Geese in Two Harbors