It’s was ugly outside early this morning … the temperature hovered around 40F, NE winds were steady at 25 mph with occasional gusts to 40 mph, and rain … thus the fearful 40’s. Now some folks would think these are horrible birding conditions, but those people would be wrong. Instead given the northern migration which is in progress, I knew there were good probabilities to see birds I would not normally find. The ugly conditions would convince birds to hide from the wind and pause their migration. Just like when bicycling, who wants to expend all the energy to fight a fierce headwind.

The key to successful birding on days of this nature is to understand the weather, the current date in the migration and your local habitat. Thus, I dressed for the weather and went out to the Park Point Recreation Area (big sand spit / dune which forms the Duluth harbor). The playing fields were under lots of water, and in addition to all the ring-billed gulls, I found some gulls and terms migrating up to the Arctic / northern Canada. Enjoy.

Courting Bonapart’s Gulls

Caspian Terns

The two types of birds jointly in one image

We know! We know!

Find the fish which are spawning and you will find hungry birds. At sunrise (5:30 am) there were an amazing number of loons, cormorants, mergansers and gulls at the mouth of the Lester River on Lake Superior. By 6:00 am the show was over, but I just shifted my location and hiked out to the Superior Entry. In the distance via my binoculars I had spied hundred of terns feeding. I said to my self: “Self … more smelt!”

It took a three mile hike but once out to the Superior Entry these rather “uncommon” Common Mergansers put on quite the show for me. This couple was much more concerned about catching fish than worrying about a human. Please note I advanced on the mergansers from out of the sun, and then sat down on the sand. Eventually the birds made their way over to me. One needs to have patience to get photographs like these images, and also not be standing up. Birds immediately recognize you as “a human” when you are standing tall. I was less than ten yards from the mergansers.

Common Mergansers Fishing for Smelt

Permission to Surface, Captain?

Captain Merganser

Dive, Captain, Dive!

The last few days have been quite the roller-coaster of weather here in northern Minnesota. Last night a late winter storm hit with huge winds and 6 to 10 inches of snow across the region. Here at my house it snowed hard, and by morning the ground was covered with white stuff. However one fringe benefit from the storm is the HUGE winds out of the northeast chopped up and melted the remaining ice. Here are two photographs I took two days ago at sunrise before the start of the stormy weather. I am standing out on Minnesota Point looking back towards town.

By this afternoon the weather had improved enough that I decided to go out birding. When I realized that the beach was now free on Park Point (Minnesota Point), I decided to look for shorebirds. As they say in birding, a little luck never hurts as I found two Piping Plovers (very rare / endangered) near Dune Bridge. I eBirded the discovery. Unfortunately about ten minutes into my observing of the plovers they were scared off by two unleashed dogs.

I waited a few minutes for the owner to reach my location and politely explained about Duluth’s Leash Laws, and how the dogs had scared endangered birds in a designated nesting area (referred him to the sign on Dune Bridge). Unfortunately I would not expect the Piping Plovers to stick around, both because of the foot traffic in this particular area and the fact that there is so little beach / sand between the high water wave mark and the dunes.