January 2020...Birding Unfettered

I this meme posted on social media and it took me a full two minutes to realize that people were making a joke that one shouldn’t 30-40 olives directly from a jar for dinner. I’ve done this more than once and have no regrets. It’s kind of the same way I feel about popcorn for dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook, but I hate doing dishes.

Possible dating profile picture…one should know what they’re getting into with me, deer rib cages and sub-zero temperatures and all.

I make jokes on social media using #DatingInYourForties is weird. Although, I’m sure I’ve probably inspired a few #DatingABirderIsWeird after someone found a frozen blue jay in my freezer when they went to get some ice. It is very hard for my brain to process that birding can now be a potential romantic activity. I have been a great compartmentalizer my whole. You are my birding friends. You are my sci fi friends. You are my friends through Bill. You are my travel birding friends. You are my comedy writing friends. And so on and so forth. After being with a non birder for a couple of decades, birding just never fell into the romantic category of activities. “Life pie” can have a whole new meaning.

Of course, birding in winter in Minnesota is a strange test because your clothes for single digit temperatures aren’t exactly what I would call “sexy time clothes.” But good birds can make even the most awkward date a good time.

I know I’m not the first person to find themselves unexpectedly in a completely new life circumstance where none of the old routines apply and you can make up completely new ones. I decided for one thing to say yes to all the invitations. It’s great to only check with myself before I do something. It’s a liberating feeling to just say yes to a birding trip without checking to see if something non birding had been planned or that I’ve not been spending enough time at home.

Want to go birding tomorrow morning? I’m not working, yes.

What to go to Texas next month? I have lots of frequent flyer miles, yes.

Want to go to a cabin this weekend and do some birding? Oh, hell yes.

View from a cabin.

In Minnesota, many people have cabins for the weekend. You have to get used to a different schedule when you have a friend with a cabin. They generally are unavailable for city plans on the weekend from spring until autumn and forget holidays. Sometimes you can get invitations to cabins, either staying in them or pitching a tent outside. Cabins run the gamut from very basic with no shower but all the fishing tackle you could ever want and can be grand lodgings with air conditioning and hot tubs. Some are closed down for the winter, but a few have good heating and insulation and can be fun winter getaway.

When I moved to Minnesota I got a real education on cabin culture when I ran a wild bird feeding store. The company even came up with a seed mix just for cabin people called, “Cabin Mix” that people could grab on their way out of town and into northern Minnesota. We also carried rustic looking houses and feeders to match cabin decor, but honestly, the people really need something strong enough to withstand being knocked down by bears.

Friends with cabins have been gracious hosts when I learned that they have a cabin near a public blind with a lek. I’d rather roll out of bed and drive twenty minutes in the dark to get to a sharp-tailed grouse blind than leave the Twin Cities at 2am.

Fresh pileated woodpecker work outside a cabin.

I had an invitation to visit a cabin with some friends in January for snowshoeing on frozen lakes, birding and maybe some fat tire biking. These are fun weekends that generally involve cooking together as well. There was some very visible pileated woodpecker activity around the cabin and the next morning a pair took turns wailing into a tree.

The bird was so close…so photographable…except for the storm windows.

The cabin was fun for me—warm winter foods and nonstop pileated woodpeckers. Even if we never made it outside, I could watch my spark bird all day long. Although, I did feel super taunted by the bird. It was a great digiscoping opportunity, however storm windows keep your place snug and warm, but they can blur the heck out of photos.

However, the next day the cabin owner had removed the storm window and even carefully opened it when the birds returned so I could take all the photos. That is one trusting cabin owner to let out precious heat for a bird photography opportunity.

A clearer view of the pileated. There’s still a bit of heat shimmer from the heat escaping the cabin through an open window, but I still dig this picture.

The next day we headed to Sax Zim Bog for some birding. It was such a great time, not only for the birds but because I ran into so many friends who were birding up there for the day. Some were guides and when I’d pul over to watch birds, I’d find text messages that said, “Hey, did I just pass you over by the goshawk?” Yes, yes they had.

Hoar frost in the bog.

If you’ve never birded the bog and you have lots of lifers to get, especially owls then hiring a guide is a must. But if you have mostly seen the birds or only need one or two lifers, you can get by on your own with a stop at the visitor center and eBird. I knew of a reliable northern hawk owl and that was our first stop. The crowd of birders on the side of the road alerted us that the bird was indeed there.

A lovely way to start the day with a northern hawk owl who gives very little care to the birders below.

A female black-backed woodpecker (was a lifer for one of us) found on the way to the Sax Zim Bog visitor Center.

We were getting all the bog birds fairly easily, except for boreal chickadee, but that’s ok. Canada jays, rough-legs and barred owls are a nice consolation prize. We continued to run into people throughout the day, including one of my fellow park rangers who had just retired last fall. We ran into him at Wilbert’s Cafe and ended up having lunch together.

From there we headed out to a spot to look for three-toed woodpeckers. And I ran into John Jonas, one of my favorite wildlife photographers. He saw me driving my Prius around the bog, pulled over and asked, “You brought a Prius to the bog???” I smiled and said, “That’s how badass I am.”

We had quite a bit of hairy woodpecker activity and Jonas found the three-toed, but it was camera shy for me. I paused to get a slefie of all of us in the bog and it was at that moment a three-toed flew over all of us.

Beardy men at the bog.

What we lacked in three-toeds was made up for with a cool mammal experience. We did find a snowshoe hare hiding near the trail. I’ve seen them here and there, usually hopping away. But this was one of the closest encounters I’ve had with one and what a treat to see its winter camouflage in action!

We tried to finish the day with a great gray owl, but no one was having any luck. At sunset we drove the usual hangouts and it seemed that every ten minutes we’d pass one of the Sax Zim guides in their vehicle with clients trying to find a bird. We’d already seen many great grays and headed back to the cabin at dusk for some celebratory beer and whiskey. I have never seen so many ruffed grouse in the trees and bushes. It was clearly a bumper crop year and it explained why goshawks were easy to find in the bog this winter.

Craptastic owl photo!

We did manage one more species of owl that day. We drove past a snowy owl as we headed back towards Aitkin County. Not a lifer, but a cool bird.

Sunrise at the cabin.

On one page, a cabin just seem like a second home that you have to take care of: extra cleaning, yard work and other maintenance. On the other page, cabin life is seductive when you watch the sunrise over coffee while bacon sizzles on the stove a fox darts through the yard. You feel like you could give up work and just live hand to mouth up there forever.

But work calls. And friends in the city call insisting on lunch plans.

Birding In Sax Zim Bog

Sunday was a much needed day--take in that common redpoll! At Thursday's Birds and Beer, people were talking about the Sax Zim Bog festival and Ecobirder was talking about his photos from the bog. (by the way, did you see his eagle release entry--very cool). My friend Amber was there and having been so sick and seeing the mountain of catch up work that I had coming, I desperately wanted a day in the bog. I had led a field trip there this year, but I just needed a day of just worrying about showing myself birds. I said, "Hey, Amber, do you want to do a day trip to the bog on Sunday?" There was only one answer to that question. And away we went! It was a blast. We used to bird quite a bit, but careers have changed our schedules and it had been awhile since it was just the two of us hanging out and birding. We ended up spending a good portion of the day talking in I Can Haz Cheezburger language--which will probably seep its way into this blog entry. Our first stop was at a residential feeding station open to the public on Blue Spruce Rd, about a mile north of 133. Someone asked in an earlier comment what the redpolls are eating. This is a mixture if Nyjer (thistle) and finely ground sunflower chips. There were also eating black oil sunflower seeds.

The pine grosbeaks were still hanging around. As we were getting photos a huge flock of evening grosbeaks flew overhead and landed in the surrounding trees--we froze, excited at the possibility of getting photos. But they chirped for about five minutes and flew away! We got totally rejected by evening grosbeaks. Jerks.

But the pine grosbeaks more than made up for the evening grosbeak dis. Look at those fluffy feathers under the chin--I could get lost in those pink floofy bits.

We just kept getting great bird after great bird at this feeding station. Some gray jays flew into the feeders as did some downy and hairy woodpeckers. And then a boreal chickadee flew in. That used to be a challenging bird to get in the bog--let alone get a photo. I aimed my digiscoping setup and prepared to get the best (and only) photo of a boreal chickadee I'd ever gotten in my entire life:

Even with a feeder, this is still a challenging bird to photograph. I could bore you with the twenty some odd photos I have of its butt, however, I did manage one photo of its head:

Digiscopin' Skillz - I has dem! This is just the best fun to me! I love living where I do. I love how I have great birds in my own neighborhood, but just a day trip away is completely different habitat with completely different feeder birds. I love how the community at Sax Zim, with the help of local birders and photographers has found away for people like me to safely enjoy the birds without irritating the crap out of them. What a treat to be able to stand in someone's driveway for awhile and just watch some of the coolest birds in the bog. This beats a few years ago with me stopping along the road watching for flocks of chickadees and pishing them out.

We drove around the bog a bit and headed to the deer ribs hanging in the tree on Admiral Rd. That had been a good spot for woodpeckers and jays this winter. The tree had changed a great deal in the weeks since I visited. Last time I was there, it was just one deer torso and now had become some strange looking bird feeding altar. It now had a deer rib cage, some store bought suet with a butt load of bird seed on the ground. It looked like some crap mix full of milo and then some all purpose mix with sunflowers. If you look at the ground in the above photo, you can see that I set the Wingscapes Camera in the seed.

I did get some redpoll photos. I'm not sure if all that seed is a good idea, I'm not sure who is leaving it, maybe just visiting birders and photographers. It's fun to see the redpolls there too, however that much seed on the ground in melting snow mixed with a few hundred redpolls is the makings of a salmonella outbreak. There were also about three dozen black-capped chickadees popping in and out for seed and suet.

I love this photo. The redpoll looks like its gleaming the cube (yeah, I went there).

Here's another boreal chickadee. It's interesting to note that the birds preferred the complete meaty deer torso over just the rib cage with the fat attached. It could be that they are just more used to the meaty torso and will turn to the rib cage as its there longer.

Here's another back shot of the boreal chickadee. Look at that faded brown cap where a black-capped would be black. What a fun, different little bird. The fun thing about digiscoping is that these birds move so fast that you don't always get to appreciate all the little details of these birds. Just fun to sit at home and just look at all his little plumage differences.

We did have one freaky instance up there and really, a trip to the bog isn't complete without something weird happening--that's part of the charm of birding there. We didn't get photos of what happened, so I'm going to use some of my many redpoll photos to go along with it.

We drove back to the Blue Spruce feeding station. Blue Spruce is one of those roads that curves around a few times, changes names and then dumps back out onto 133. We were creeping along Blue Spruce looking for black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers and then just kind of kept going on the off chance we could see anything else on the back roads. When we got to the end of Aspen, where it curves and changes into Birch we could see about six large dogs shoulder to shoulder in the road. I've seen a couple of dogs on this road before but not this many. I slowed down because the road was icy and figured if I drove through slowly, the dogs would part and we could get through. The dogs didn't move, in fact, they charged the car and started barking.

We couldn't get through and stopped. I tried honking but that didn't do anything. I tried to creep forward and they would just run around on all sides and wouldn't let us through. I honestly didn't know how to get around them without hitting one.

Eventually, a woman came out and tried to call them in, but it did no good. She came over to the car and it explained that the dogs get dumped here. She said that at one point someone had dumped 50 some odd huskies at this corner. These dogs didn't look like huskies, more like some type of boxer. As she was talking to us, the dogs were jumping and bouncing off my car--they were jumping to the top of the window and we could see more dogs coming out of the woods. We could also see in her truck off the side that there were at least three more smaller dogs inside. All the dogs looked well fed and I was grateful I was at least driving down the road and not walking.

I told her that I didn't know how to get through without hitting one and she said if I went fast, the dogs would part ways. She said that they just want to race the car and if I hit one, it was no big deal. No big deal to her, but a big deal to me.

We pulled ahead and the pack followed us, still surrounding the car. Some kept running and stopping in front of the car and others continued to jump up to the side--one jumped up, I heard a bump and then yelping. They followed us around the corner for about a quarter of mile running in front of the car as soon as we would try to speed up seemingly aware that we would stop to not hit them. There were just so many coming from so many different directions that I was really in a panic that I would hit one or run it over. Amber was great with the encouragement and helping to keep me calm. I don't remember exactly what we said to each other, but I'm fairly certain it involved lost of words starting with the letter F. I don't know how I would have made it alone. Doggies, don't eatz meh car plz, ok, thx, bye.

We eventually made it through, but it was incredibly unnerving, the dogs seem to sense that you don't want to hit them and just run in front of you and bite your bumper. When I got home last night, I posted the experience on the Minnesota listservs and got six emails right away from people who had a similar experience and weren't sure about posting. About half of them told me that they also saw a 400 - 500 pound pig mixed in with the dogs!

Mike Hendrickson has been great about sending our experiences to local city officials and trying to contact animal shelters up there to maybe do something about the dogs. The mayor advised that if you have this experience that you call 911--stress that it's not an emergency, but describe the incident and where it's happening. The more calls, the more likely something can be done to control the dogs.

After our experience, I told Amber that I had to go back to the bird feeders and soak up some cleansing redpoll action. We soaked up the redpolls, cleansed ourselves of the scary not so lol dogs and headed back to the Twin Cities.

Another great day in the bog.