Tag Archives: MN North: Canosia Wildlife Area

Lady Aurora Dances and Rare Birds Fly!

Year 10,

Oh wow! Yesterday was magical. How else can you describe a day that begins with watching in Duluth a rare, beautiful bird that normally hangs out west of the Rocky Mountains, and ends with a magical dance by Lady Aurora?! In addition this was the day immediately following the one where I watched not one, but two Great Gray Owls hunting at once. Life is special and precious!

My special day began after some morning appointments.  A local home owner has graciously opened up his yard to allow birders to see a Varied Thrush that likes to eat suet off the ground underneath some bird feeders. This West Coast bird has no business visiting the Arctic Riviera at the start of winter.

Here is the Varied Thrush’s normal range (map courtesy of Cornell’s All About Birds … learn more about this orange and slate blue beauty)

Normally, this Lifer for me would be enough to call it a fantastic day, but Lady Aurora decided to dance last night. While most people had followed the media hype the prior night and chased the Northern Lights, when the prior night’s early technical numbers were poor followed by an early moonrise with 90% of the light of a full moon, I slept! However, last night was different! When the Northern Lights numbers spiked by 5:30 pm (sunset was at 4:20 pm this far north), and knowing the moon would not rise till 8 pm, I initiated my chase of the Northern Lights (read more about how I track a potential Northern Lights display).

On a frozen lake north of Two Harbors, Lady Aurora came out and danced for me. The ice was groaning and cracking as it froze thicker in the cold night air, which made for an earie performance. It is worth maximizing the image to enjoy the details and lake ice reflections (more to come from this dance, but time to get ready for morning birding in Sax-Zim Bog).

Tracking the Sun for Your Bird Outing: SunCalc

Background, Year 10, ,

I am enjoying a morning at home, as the rains finally arrived overnight and the weather is ugly outside, but such was not the case yesterday. The day dawned crystal clear and with the first hint of autumn. It was 39F on Admiral Road in Sax-Zim Bog at 6 am, and did not rise to 40F till after 7 am. I had an excellent morning, and enjoyed my route.

One very important aspect of any birding outing (or even just a longer hike in a local park) is knowing in advance where the sun will be located relative to your current or planned position. If you are visiting a new area, and slowly driving down a remote dirt road scanning for birds, if that road ends up tracking into the morning sun, your birding success will be poor. It is no fun on a birding hike or slow drive in your car to be staring directly into the sun. It makes it darn hard to see anything.

While I use an advanced app on my phone and tablet called PlanIt for Photographers, which allows me to not only know the sun’s and moon’s location on any given day (and time), or additional items like planning milky way photographs for a given time of night and learning where truly dark night time skies are located (and much more) … for most people an app of this nature is overkill. Thus in this post I am reviewing a free service you may use on computer (not phone) that easily allows you to plan your own outings, and is free! The service is named SunCalc.Org.

SunCalc allows the user to accomplish the basics, but arguably the most important task … where will the sun be located relative to a given (or expected) location at some time in the future.

SunCalc.Org (basic or entry screen upon loading web page)

The Red Arrows and White Numbering & Text are my Annotations!

Map Layers

Zoom In and Out & Location

Time of Day Slider

Select Date

Selected Menu Options

Once again, SunCalc provides only the basics, but it does a good job and has an easy to learn interface. Happy birding.

Northern Harrier Nest!

Year 10
There are epic days while out birding, and seven days ago I had just such a day/find. I left home at 5:30 am and had actually not seen much, till my last stop of the morning when I found a Northern Harrier nest!!!!
.
Actually, I know where the nest was located (young now fledged), but could not actually see the nest. Northern Harriers nest on the ground on small raised mounds of land in the middle of bogs. It is impossible to see their nests unless you are a glutton for punishment. One would need to wade through the swamp / bog braving all the horse flies, mosquitoes, other bugs to get anywhere near the actual nest. I stayed on dry land!
.
A few days prior to my find I had noticed a male and female Northern Harrier on the wing at this location. The female dove down into the Bog, and disappeared. Seeing two harriers together made me wonder if a nest was in the vicinity and when I returned to that location … jackpot!  I now saw four harriers together … Mom and her three juveniles. In the intervening two days the young had fledged and often sat in a nearby dead Tamarack Pine. I proceeded to watch the juvenile Northern Harriers for hours. Their acrobatics as the young hawks learned to fly told me where the nest was located. The juvenile harriers would dive to the ground out of sight … at the same exact spot.
.
Here are some images I have taken over the past seven days of the Northern Harriers.
.
All Three Juvenile Northern Harriers

Learning to Fly

One Juvenile Landed on a Remote Road

More Images ...

I took all of my Harrier photographs from quite a distance while seated in my car. My tool for camera stabilization is a “bean bag mount”. I love the medium sized bag from Grizzly. They are inexpensive mounts and a person may place it directly on the window frame of a car. I have also placed mine on rocks, tree stumps, etc. to get a stable camera platform. It is easier to carry in a small backpack than a tripod. One does need to fill the bag with your favorite “stuffing. I am using dried peas! Link to the Grizzly company. I bought mine via Amazon … minimal cost.