Tag Archives: MN North: Amity

Do you speak Crow? (Amity Creek Black Bear!)

I already posted once today, and I asked the question … Do you speak Great Blue Heron?

Apparently I should have also asked the question … Do you speak Crow?!

While I was finishing up the prior post, I heard the crows screaming from my computer. Please understand there are many different types of crow talk. I knew the inflection to their screams meant something was happening outside my house. Yup!

I am beginning to suspect this bear has it den within 500 yards of my home.

Amity Creek Black Bear (very short video)

Blog Notes

In my most recent post, I included links to the float plane videos. This will now be a new feature of each post that includes a movie. I learned by subscribing to my own blog that folks who receive blog post email updates were NOT seeing any embedded movies. Given many of you have missed my short movies, here is the page from my blog which lists most my videos.

In addition, my email subscribers did not see my forest fire video. Here is the movie I took on that scary evening just a few nights ago … right across from my house.

A small sampling of videos I have taken over the past few months which were embedded in blog posts, but did not show up in email updates:

Finally, an update on my Great Horned Owl family. While the young have fledged, with the help of path finding crows and blue jays, I am able to find individual owls during most hikes. This morning was typical. I followed the confrontation between the owl and crows by ear for several miles through the forest, but when everyone flew across a deep ravine, I had to give up. Here are photographs taken shortly after sunrise a few mornings ago. It’s tough being a Great Horned Owl in the morning.

The last image shows why if one is willing to hike (often several miles off trail), I am able to find my owls. It is not unusual to have 20+ crows dive bombing the poor owl, and even landing just a few feet from an owl. However, before I show too much sympathy for my Great Horned Owls, understand that they are raiding a huge number of crow’s nest every night for a snack. The evidence was very much obvious around the old nesting site. There is no love lost between these two species of birds.

Watching Crows Diving and Dipping (and then me)

Crow Attack

 

Forest Fire!

It is scary when a forest fire breaks out right across the street from your own home. At one point the flames were easily over 70 feet high. The location is on Occidental Blvd (7 Bridges Road) in Duluth. Yesterday evening.

Thank you Duluth Fire Department for your quick and professional work.