I know that woodpeckers eat lots of things, but their visits to our feeders are almost always at the fake or real suet blocks. Somehow I often forget that they like nuts even though I do regularly see Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers at my peanut feeders. Yesterday’s visiting Pileated Woodpecker was one of the first times that I had seen one of these lovely monsters on the peanuts. Before this male came to the feeder, he and another Pileated Woodpecker did a round-and-round-the-trunk dance on our spruce tree.
I am at the end of the second day of a 3-day trip to Sax-Zim Bog, a mega birding hot spot a bit less than an hour out of Duluth. I went there last year in early February and had planned to join this year’s Wausau Bird Club trip there which begins tomorrow, but their schedule wasn’t quite right for me.
Although I enjoy wandering the roads here to see what birds are around, my real goal is owls, and in particular, this year I mainly wanted to see a Boreal Owl. A few days ago, they had apparently been numerous east of the Bog, but reports had dwindled. My only previous Boreal Owl sightings were in Alaska when we lived there. My second most wanted bird for this trip was Great Gray Owl, which I saw last year here, but just cannot get enough of.
While there were a few Great Gray Owl reports in the Bog yesterday, I did not see one, and there were no Boreal Owl reports there yesterday. It all changed today. In addition to a very cooperative sleeping and then hunting Great Gray Owl that someone else found and reported and which I visited three times from late morning to late afternoon, there also was a Boreal Owl sleeping and then waking less than a mile from the Great Gray. On my way back to my motel, I found another Great Gray Owl on my own. LIFE IS GOOD!!!!
The first six photos are of the huge (over 26 inches long) Great Gray Owl that I just could not resist.
The three photos below are of the very tiny (under 10 inches long) Boreal Owl.
Sometimes my birding and my rhyming get mixed up with each other. Yesterday I went to a neighborhood in Wausau where a winter-open creek (Bos Creek) appears from somewhere. All I know is that each winter since we moved back here in 2021, Mallards have congregated there along with a few American Black Ducks. Yesterday’s goal was to add a Black Duck to my year list, which I did, even though I had to stand outside for a minute or so in the 1-degree weather to do it, peering down at the creek, and trying to pore through the nearly 100, or maybe more, Mallards to find one. It turns out that there were at least two of them, so similar and so different from, a female Mallard.
I added American Black Duck to my year list and went on to other birding and then to chores. But in the middle of the night (early this morning), I awoke, thinking of the Black Ducks and then thinking of the old children’s song, “Little White Duck” (there are a bunch of You Tube versions of it online if you are not familiar with it). I couldn’t get the new words that came to me out of my mind. So I got up, and wrote it down. Here is my oh-so-creative “new” song:
There’s some little Black Ducks, sitting in the water, some little Black Ducks, doing what they outer.
They swim with the Mallards at little Bos Creek. Each so black with a bright yellow beak.
There’s some little Black Ducks, sitting in the water. Quack. Quack. Quack.
For me the answer is usually, “Go birding,” which is what I did this morning. Before I got out of bed, I had rather hoped to hear the Great Horned Owls that I have heard the last couple of early mornings (around 3:30-4:30) to begin the new year, but all was silent. I got up, cared for our dog (feed, take out), fed the birds, and drove south from Wausau to the Buena Vista Grasslands. This is usually about a 45 minute drive, but the roads were covered with new snow so it took a bit over an hour to get there.
When I arrived, it was still totally dark, except the new snow cover, while only an inch or so deep, made it possible to see vague outlines of protruding grasses. I drove to a site where I had seen a Short-eared Owl at 7:12 am on December 3rd. Today, at 6:54 I first saw a dark blob that seemed to be moving, and I turned off the car. Very soon, I could see an owl with beautifully patterned wings, confirming that my first bird of the year was a Short-eared Owl. Then I was even more delighted to see that there were two of them, doing slow gentle pirouettes, dives and close-to-the-surface skims together over the field. After about 15 minutes they just disappeared, presumably diving down into an area of taller grasses for their daytime rest, although I could not find them there when I drove along the road in the daylight.
Sometimes birding is not about chasing birds, or even about seeing them, but is about watching for and waiting for them. Right now, while we still have the residents, such as Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, most of our summer birds have left for southern climes, not knowing we were going to have a mild fall, and basically no winter yet.
Our normal wintertime birds are mostly somewhere north of here in Canada, with only a few having finally drifted down to the northern part of the state recently. Although we’ve had a few light snows, right now there is no snow on the ground. It’s mid-December in central Wisconsin!
So birding now is more about watching squirrels eat bird seed in my yard than it is about watching birds.
Winter is coming they say- it’s supposed to dip below zero (degrees F) at night two days from now and to barely rise above it during the next day. And maybe there will be an inch of snow. Slowly, slowly. Maybe more birds will arrive soon…
I got the word this morning – there was a Snowy Owl, perched on an electrical pole, IN Wausau (WI) where I live, and not out in a field somewhere! I had not seen one in all of 2024, after much looking for one, even when I went up to Minnesota last winter to search for owls. I hurriedly put away my breakfast dishes, gathered up my binoculars and camera, and took off. When I arrived at about 7:40, it was obvious to see where the owl was. There were some 6-8 cameras aimed in its direction, still perched at the top of the pole. About 10 minutes after I arrived it (probably a she, or perhaps a very young he, because of how much black striping it had) flew across the road and landed on the top of a green building, where it poked at its foot and fluffed its feathers after being dive-bombed by a couple of crows. It was still there when I left, seemingly dozing.
When I restarted my blog a couple of months ago, I intended to keep my blog limited to Wisconsin bird topics, but birding in Arizona and Texas is so special, I just need to include a few highlights in my blog from my recent trip there. It was both a wonderful and a horrible trip. The birds and the birding, of course, were wonderful, but at the start of the trip when I had just been in Arizona a couple of days, I learned that my beautiful longtime Texas friend, Debra, whom I was going to visit and stay with and bird with the next week, had just died of a very unexpected heart attack! Deciding that changing my travel plans would do nothing to bring her back, I kept on keeping on with my previous plans.
After I birded with a Wisconsin-Arizona friend south of Tucson, the Arizona portion of the trip was primarily a great night-birds tour offered by Field Guides to southeast Arizona birding hotspots. We visited places on the tour that I had birded many years ago with my Texas friend. Each day where we went and the birds we saw brought memories of her. On this year’s trip, we saw many southern Arizona birds including five owls plus another owl that we only heard. After Arizona, I flew to Texas and birded places that she and I had birded together and had planned to bird again. I also went on my originally scheduled trip to the King Ranch, especially with the goal of seeing the Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. A photo sampler of my trip follows.
The first set of photos is from days 1-2 of the Field Guides tour. The birds shown are in order from top left across each row and then going downward and across each row of photos: Verdin, Vermilion Flycatcher, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Yellow-eyed Junco, Arizona Woodpecker, Acorn Woodpecker, Elf Owl, Whiskered Screech-Owl, and Red-faced Warbler.:
The next set of photos is from days 3-5 of the Arizona guided tour showing a Montezuma Quail (bad photo that still shows its distinctive silhouette), Elegant Trogon, Green-tailed Towhee, Western Screech-Owl by flashlight, Spotted Owl (back), Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Black-chinned Sparrow and Lazuli Buntings at a feeder.
The last set of photos is from the Texas portion of my trip taken along the Gulf coast and along the Rio Grande Valley, showing a Great Kiskadee, a perched Greater Roadrunner (they aren’t always running on roads), and a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (two back views – top photo shows the feathering on its back that looks like eyes, and the bottom photo shows one real eye and part of one of its fake eyes on its turned head).
This morning I saw my first Ruby-crowned KInglets of the year at McMillan Marsh about 45 minutes south of my Wausau home. There was a little flock of them singing and chattering, some of them coming down to bushes along the path, ignoring me entirely. Every now and then one of them would excitedly raise his red crest and chatter even more vigorously, apparently at another kinglet that came too close. There were also a couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets that stayed higher in the trees. I spent about half an hour trying to get a photograph of the ever-moving Ruby-crowned Kinglets. Many many of my photos showed only branches, but finally one of the kinglets stayed near enough for long enough that I was able to get some pictures of it.
For many years, every time I have seen a Ruby-crowned Kinglet I have been suddenly reminded of a day long ago in North Carolina. After we moved to Raleigh in the late 70s, the heat and the ever-present numerous wood ticks mostly had kept me mostly indoors for weeks, maybe months. I had been a birder before the move, birding in the much cooler climates of Wisconsin, Alaska and Oregon, but now I just could not face the muggy frighteningly ticky out-of-doors. One day as I was taking trash out to our backyard garbage can, a sudden explosion of chattering came out of a sapling near the can. Just at eye level was an extremely tiny, extremely agitated bird, with the top of his head bright red. A beautiful little Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I was stunned. Why had I abandoned birding? Just because of heat and bugs? Really. There were too many birds waiting to be seen. I had to face it. I would face it. I would go back to birding! And I did! Since then I have never not been a birder. It is too much fun. There are too many remarkable little (and big) birds, and too many remarkable things to see them do. Thank you little Ruby-crowned Kinglet!
Most of us who appear to be even remotely interested in birds have at least once been asked what our favorite bird is. It can happen at the end of a group field trip when the leader might ask the group to tell their favorite bird of the trip. Or it might happen when people first meet each other at a bird club or when out birding. It is a good conversation starter.
I never know what to say when I am asked. I usually just blurt out the most memorable bird that I have most recently seen. Probably a colorful or cute or funny bird. If I am allowed more than one bird and better yet, can generalize to groups of birds, it is much more easy for me to answer. I can at least say that my favorite birds are hummingbirds, cranes, and owls. The smallest, the biggest, and one in between in size. Hummingbirds have yet to arrive in Wisconsin for the year, and owls, while always around, are usually not that easy to find. But Sandhill Cranes have arrived. There are usually at least two cranes, and sometimes small flocks, in many of the fields around where I live, and probably all across the state. Their scrawky calls delight me as I drive along with my windows open, or hear them overhead.
Nowadays owls are on my mind the most though. I am mostly through the process of writing the text for a book about owls and have painted over 40 of the 50 owl paintings that my publisher is allowing me to have in the book. I am to submit my manuscript and paintings by the end of June to Texas A&M University Press, which published my three other books. Although this process is very time-consuming, I have been enjoying putting this all together. If all goes as planned and I don’t have more than a zillion rewrites, it may actually become a real book by early 2025.
We have had a very dry, snowless winter so almost all the people are happy about today’s snow. The birds are busily scrambling to eat my new deliveries of birdseed before everything is again covered with snow. We are expecting a couple of inches yet today and more tomorrow apparently. We all will be busy.
Over the winter the American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins have regularly gone from being omnipresent to disappearing and back again. With this snow the goldfinches are up to over 50, but there are only a few Pine Siskins around our yard. Every now and then there is a small flock of American Robins in the yard, but mostly just one or two right now. The Mourning Doves are down to a few pairs from being a huge flock during the winter.
American GoldfinchPine SiskinAmerican Robin
While there are at least two Northern Cardinals around, they do not come down to our feeders as often as the goldfnches, robins and doves. Today, however, there was a pair. The female was briefly at the feeders, but the male sat up high in the trees, first in a deciduous tree across the street, and then hiding toward the top of our front yard spruce.
The snow just keeps coming down. An unphotographed Tufted Titmouse called to me a little while ago as I was typing and then was quiet. For now all the birds have disappeared, probably hiding in the trees to get out of the wet, never-ending snow. I expect they do not admire the beauty of it as much as I do (or maybe not at all).
