In the midst of all the last minute planning for The Big Year Birds and Beers I still have to work and I’m in the middle of 3 different bird surveys. One is my fall waterfowl surveys in conjunction with the National Park, US Fish and Wildlife, MN DNR and WI DNR and the others [ Read More ]
Last week, before I headed to Horicon Marsh, I stopped at Mr. Neil’s house to check our bees and some warbler watching. The plan was to check the bees Thursday afternoon, spend the night, bird in the morning and then hit the road to Horicon. Being British, there’s not a lot of coffee around the [ Read More ]
Well, Friday morning turned out to be far more exciting than I anticipated! I had to work at the park service in the afternoon and evening and I was meeting a friend for a late breakfast. I thought that since it was warm, I’d peek at the great horned owl nest in my neighborhood and [ Read More ]
The sexual tensions between pairs of red-tailed hawks was palpable today. They were either paired up on light posts or females were on the nest while a male was perched nearby keeping watching. I passed this particular nest in a ravine just off of a county road in Hastings, MN. I got out to get [ Read More ]
I’ve never been a fan of fake owls. They rarely do the intended purpose of “scaring” birds away. Birds either figure out that they are fake or it can attract crows…or the occasionally very dense Cooper’s hawk: We sometimes use fake owls to get the attention of passing raptors to come down to the nets [ Read More ]
Warning! This video gets kinda gross…especially for me. After we banded birds this morning at Carpenter Nature Center, I was asked if I could help feed some of their education birds of prey. Their red-tailed hawk is a very easy going imprinted bird. He eats easily from the hand, so I thought I would take [ Read More ]
I just have too many photos that I took Tuesday during what the local weathermen are calling “an inconvenient snow” (because it was only 2 inches that fell, but it hit during rush hour snarling traffic in the worst way). The first was the snowy owl and then I headed over to the Minnesota Valley [ Read More ]
Yes, I did just make that joke. It was hard to contain any Twin Cities resident indoors today. After sub zero temps, the weather really warmed up to the twenties and thirties over the weekend and today it got to the low to mid forties–whoot. And we need to gather our rosebuds while we may, [ Read More ]
At first when I was looking at my schedule and budget for the fall, I was worried I just wouldn’t be able to get to my friend Frank Taylor’s hawk banding station–my favorite bird activity I do all year. I was very down that I would not get to see a northern goshawk (my favorite [ Read More ]
I keep trying to write this blog entry, but my rabbit insists on using me as a jungle gym, making typing most difficult. Here’s a photo of last weekend’s banding crew (the only bummer is that Frank Taylor, the guy who runs the blind isn’t in it). But from left to right we have Reier [ Read More ]
