Minnesota birding in February
- Bruce Glick: Gone Birding
- February 9, 2018
- 1596
Male pine grosbeak in Duluth, Minnesota.
Last week four of us from the Goshen area headed to Duluth, Minnesota for two days of birding. I had been hoping to visit fellow Wayne County birder Ryan Steiner, who now lives in Duluth, where he is studying and doing research on owls and hawks. Ryan kindly agreed to work us into his schedule and to show us the winter birds of the area. Because it’s the off-season for tourists, we were able to stay at a hotel located on the shore of Lake Superior. Ryan’s apartment was close by.
We had an hour or so before Ryan got back from the university, so we drove out to the little strip of land beyond our hotel. Lake Superior was frozen close to shore, but there was open water further out. We could see common mergansers and common goldeneye ducks, plus several bald eagles. There also was a pileated woodpecker and later a mourning dove at a feeder. We found out from Ryan that mourning doves are unusual in Duluth.
Around 2 p.m. Ryan joined us to drive the back roads along the north shore of Lake Superior. This area is the closest place to look for a boreal owl, one of the most difficult owls to find anywhere in North America. Ryan was involved in banding these small owls during the fall migration along with long-eared and northern saw-whet owls.
I should say at the outset that there are not a lot of birds in this part of Minnesota during the winter. Very cold temperatures plus snow cover make it difficult to survive, so most birds leave the area for the winter. However, there are some very special birds to be found, most notably the owls.
On that first afternoon, the first birds we found were four pine grosbeaks. The birds were perched in trees near a house in a wooded area where we assumed they were visiting feeders. Pine grosbeaks don’t seem to be very common this winter, so we were glad to find them on the first day.
Ryan then took us to an area where Bohemian waxwings sometimes are found, although not so far this winter. Just as we were going to turn around and look elsewhere, we spotted a large flock of birds that at first looked like starlings. When we got closer, they clearly were Bohemians. There were at least 60, which we thought was a lot, but Ryan said sometimes there are thousands of them. This was indeed a special sighting for all of us.
The next bird to show up was a large owl that had us thinking great gray owl, but it was a barred owl, quite close to the road and not bothered by us stopping to look. Later in the afternoon we found a second barred owl, prompting Ryan to say he doesn’t see them very often. Birding is always full of surprises.
As it got closer to evening, we were looking hard for boreal owls when a good-sized bird in a tree got our attention. It turned out to be a ruffed grouse, not an unusual sight, according to Ryan. And so the first afternoon ended with some good finds and with us excited about heading out in the morning to Sax Zim Bog, the premier birding spot for a number of Duluth specialties. More about that next week.
Good birding!
Bruce Glick can be reached at birderbruce@yahoo.com or 330-317-7798.