February Bird Count

All of the most intense birders (and many less intense birders too) keep what's called a "life list" - a list of all the bird species they've seen in the wild in their lifetime. I have not yet sat down and written out my life list. I have experimented with a number of different formats that I'd like to record my birding observations, but none have yet stuck. Nonetheless, I am aware of what bird species I have and haven't observed since I started paying attention to birds in the first place (which, by the way, was in vertebrate biology class, senior year at St. Olaf).

This month has been a good one for my life list. Four of the six species I observed were "lifer" birds for me. Yes, I only observed six new species this month for my 2013 bird count: the two owls I already wrote about and four birds at Sax-Zim Bog, the premier birding spot in Minnesota. New birds for my "life list" will be indicated with an (L).

2/5/13:
15. Boreal Owl (L): Wolf Ridge, chickadee landing (see previous blog entry)

Wolf Ridge's boreal owl, checking me out through the branches

2/12/13:
16. Great Gray Owl (L): Silver Bay, MN, 4 miles west of the Lax Lake Rd. Forest Rd. 11 intersection (see previous blog entry)

Another Great Gray Owl we saw on our drive home from Sax-Zim Bog on the 23rd

2/23/13: Peter, our resident birding expert, took Robyn, Nikki, Anne, Tom, and me on a birding field trip to Sax-Zim Bog. People travel here from all over the world for the birds (we met birders from California and Florida during our trip). In addition to the four species listed below, we saw a ton of birds that we commonly see right out our backdoor in Finland. The fact that people travel from all over the world to this spot to see birds that are common for us was kind of an exciting realization of just how awesome we have it, bird-wise, at Wolf Ridge in the winter. We also experienced a crazy person yelling at us about trespassing, threatening to call the police, and making us fear for our lives as he reached into his car to grab what we thought was going to be a shotgun (it was his cell-phone), but that's an entirely different tale.
17. Gray Jay: Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station
18. Boreal Chickadee (L): Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station

A little smaller than the much more common black-capped chickadees, with a lighter head and brown sides.

19. Brown Creeper: Sax-Zim Bog, Admiral Road feeder station

A beautiful bird with great camouflage, famous for its behavior of climbing up the sides of tree trunks.

20. Hoary Redpoll (L): Sax-Zim Bog, Owl Road feeder station (probably would not have been able to identify this one if another birder hadn't been there to help us see the subtle differences between the aptly named common redpolls and their rarer cousins, the hoary redpolls.)

Hopefully, this coming month will start to see some of the earliest migrants returning for the spring and summer, as well as a few more owls I've gotten tips on and will be taking off to find this weekend.