The birds one finds in northern Minnesota have definitely changed since my youth (I’m 62 years old). Our family home was only a few miles from where my wife and I live now. We had two huge bird feeders which were always busy, particularly in the winter. Like clockwork, every fall I could count upon the fact that when the Mountain Ash berries ripened in our yard, the Evening Grosbeaks would appear out of the Boreal Forest. When the berries were gone, and the grosbeaks were sufficiently drunk from fermented berries, they would then spend the rest of the winter in our yard … visiting our feeders many times per day. As the snows began to fall, Red Crossbills would join the backyard celebration.

It has been decades since I have had either bird specie in my feeders. However, now each winter sees my flock of Mourning Doves making their daily visits to my feeders, and Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal normally appear. While mourning doves were always present when I was a child, they never braved the northern Minnesota winters. To see a cardinal, one had to travel way south of Duluth. Yes … times and weather have changed.

Thus, you can imagine my pleasure when while birding yesterday morning I heard Evening Grosbeaks! Even though I normally only find these birds once or twice per year, their song is etched into my memory. I knew immediately what birds were near by, and looking up to the very tops of some ash and pine trees … there were my yellow friends. Life is good.

Since your own youth, what birds do you now see, or don’t?

Evening Grosbeaks on McDavitt Road in Sax-Zim Bog

The Other Grosbeaks! (Pine Grosbeaks at an old Berry Farm near Duluth)

The Daily Northern Hawk Owl Fix (a vole was about to meet its doom)

Eating a vole (earlier in the day before the sun really came out)