A Winter storm hit northern Minnesota starting at 8 am. For the last four hours it has been snowing an inch per hour. Given the poor driving conditions, it made sense to focus today’s efforts on my own back yard. No matter what the weather, my four feeders attract birds. It is interesting to note that the chickadee featured in the second photo already has snow collecting on its head … after only a few seconds of inactivity!

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Winter Finch

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Snow Bird

I could not resist a second post for today. This has been a great birding day. It started 1/2 hour before dawn down at Canal Park, and continued with today’s plieated woodpecker (see post #1 for today), but as the late night commercial states: But wait … there’s more!

Thus, shortly before 4 pm I drove over to “owl alley” which is only a few miles from my house. The Great Gray Owl was back and hunting. I had a fantastic hour watching him hunt and taking photographs. It was fun to watch him catch a vole and down it in one gulp. Later, he flew directly over my head at a height of only five feet as he moved hunting grounds. Wow!

Here are two photos from this afternoon’s events!

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Take-Off

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Changing Hunting Vantage Points

Only their hairdresser knows for sure! 🙂

I combined two photographs into one picture of these two birds. As you can see, they look very, very similar. However, in the wild it is not too difficult to correctly identify these two birds.

1. A Hairy Woodpecker is about 1/3 larger than a Downy
2. The bill of a Hairy is both broader and longer (a Downy’s is sharper)
3. The outside tail feathers of a Hairy are pure white. A Downy’s will have gray or black spots.

Read more about keeping these two birds straight at BirdWatching.Com.

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Both Birds (Hairy on the right)

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Hairy Woodpecker

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Downy Woodpecker