Christmas Bird Counting
I helped out with the Eagan Christmas Bird Count today. Most of the trails were fairly well groomed, but the temps in the Twin Cities started out at -5. But it was at least 20 degrees by the end of the day.
Actually, Linda the woman in the above photo had us hiking pretty hard and fast on some snowy hills. All the hiking had us sweating under our multiple layers of pants. And if you're looking at the above photo thinking that it doesn't look so bad, check out where we had just come from:
Yes, that is where we had just come from. Hoo-wee. Linda wore me out but kept me warm.
Since the goal was to try and count birds, I didn't have a chance to do huge amounts of digiscoping but I did get an okay shot of a tree sparrow.
We wrapped up at about 4pm and since it was evening, I thought I would drive by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport to see if a snowy owl had shown up yet. I passed by the glycol plant and there on one of the light posts was a snowy owl.
I got out of the car and tried to digiscope a photo of the snowy, but the light wasn't the best, but good enough for the blog. And it's usually best not to lallygag around the glycol plant at an airport with a spotting scope taking photos. 
It's a one way road out of the plant so I drove slowly past the lamp and stuck my camera out the window to get one last photo. I love living in Minneapolis where a snowy owl is less than eight miles from home.Labels: digiscoping
posted by birdchick at 5:28 PM
7 Comments:
Wow, you spent all day birding in the woods and then you hit the motherload in a parking lot on the way home! Woohoo! Thanks for the awesome Snowy Owl picture!
I'm glad you took the trouble to try to digiscope that beautiful owl!
Hi Sharon,
That sure is a beautiful owl. Any thoughts on whether it's the same Snowy Owl that hung around the MSP airport last year? I think I need to start keeping an eye out over here at the RST airport too--just in case!!
I don't think this is the same owl. It's pretty heavily barred, I think it's a first year female. Most of the snowy owls that show up at the airport are first year birds--they are the ones that get pushed out of the territories by the older, more experienced birds. I think they always end up at the airport because they go south until they find habitat that looks like the tundra. The airport is nice wide and flat.
Our CBC got postponed because the driving conditions were supposed to be bad yesterday; bummer.
Nice owl! Maybe I should go out to our airport--it's a lot smaller, I'm sure, but it's out in the open fields and very flat. Maybe I'll get lucky!
I don't know how you survive in those cold temperatures. While you were tromping through the snow I was sweating at the CBC in Miami.
Airports are great for owls, I like to stop by and the seeing Burrowing Owls that we have nearby. But they don't even begin to compare to your Snowy Owl. I need to come up north and see one of those.
Have I seen a snowy owl?
I am seating reading the paper in the late afternoon, looking through the windows at the large beaver pond below the house. Through the dark branches of the winter trees I see a big hawklike white bird flying over the frozen pond.
The first think that comes to my mind is “egret” (when we bought the house 4 years ago there were several pair nesting in spring, but they have not come back since) but it cannot be an egret, it does not fly like one and it is too cold now in Sharon anyhow.
My husband says, “it must be the osprey”, but the osprey is white when seeing from below and this bird flying elegantly over the pond is totally white from above.
It is not a falcon either. It has to be an owl then but I have never seen a white owl before.
I am totally thrilled.
Pilar
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