Tag Archives: Birding Know How

Northern Minnesota Birding Locations & Links (new PDF download)

Year 13

Early last year I created a PDF document which contained descriptions of my favorite northern Minnesota Birding Locations and Links. Apparently due to changes by Adobe, web links in older PDF versions of my document … including Google Maps locations … may no longer work. Thus I have created an updated version where the links work … version 8.0.

For website viewers and subscribers, version 8.0 may be directly downloaded from this blog post. However, on May 1, 2026  (in 8 days) the direct download link will disappear from this post, and everyone will once again need to use the normal download request form (still free).

40,000 Bird Songs from Northern Minnesota!

Year 13
This morning I achieved 40,000 birdsong sound ID’s made and recorded since my little Raspberry-Pi birdsong listening computer went live last August. The number would be even higher if I did not configure my computer differently than the standard install:
  • Force the confidence for an I.D. to be 75% rather than the standard 70% used by the Cornell Merlin App and BirdNET-Pi. 2)
  • Require the computer to wait 2 minutes before I.D.’ing the same bird species.

Regardless, it has been very fun to learn more about the birds singing in my yard, and give/build/install similar listening systems at many of NE Minnesota’s Nature Centers. I have also built listening stations for many friends, and also have five systems I modified for placement off the grid in the wilderness. Learn more!

The post directly linked above explains how I brought a listening station to Costa Rica this past winter. I discovered via my listening station that Elegant Trogon’s lived in an area I liked to bird, which then led me on a quest to both see and photograph the Elegant Trogon!

Your host (Rich Hoeg) interviewed on NPR about birds!

Year 11,

Well heck, what do you think National Public Radio would talk to me about, frogs?! As past readers know, I have been building small computers, BirdNET-Pi’s, which combine my techie knowledge with my love of birds. I donate both my time and the cost of the computers / birdsong listening devices to Northeastern Minnesota Nature Centers. I then combine that effort with my birding knowledge to help with research.

The NPR show, Here and Now, decided to interview a number of us (not just me) about our efforts to perform bird research, preserve habitat and help with the fight against global warming. The Here and Now episode is titled, “This Fairyland Bog is a Beacon for Winter Birding, and a Sponge for the Climate”. You may listen to the piece, or read the transcript! The correspondent, even focused upon how I became interested in birds as a young child. Quoting Chris Bentley interviewing me: “I’m a retired techie, and I had always been intrigued with birds here in northern Minnesota,” Hoeg said. “When I was a young child, I lived next to a forest, and I was allowed to go traipsing around the forest by myself and just had to be home by suppertime.”

Anyhow … your options:

As an aside, I could myself not listen when the episode first broadcast nationwide last week. Minnesota Public Radio has a program, Minnesota Now, which plays on my local MPR station instead of the NPR feed. Uff dah. So much for telling friends and family to “tune in”.