It’s an oddly exciting day at the National Park I work for (Mississippi National River and Recreation Area)–the river is flooding and it’s odd to be excited by the flood and watch what the water will do. Since our visitor center is based in the Science Museum lobbby, we’re right on the Mississippi River in [ Read More ]
Last Saturday I helped out with the St. Paul Christmas Bird Count. I love the above photo, that’s two of our team members standing on the frozen Mississippi River counting ducks with the downtown St. Paul skyline behind them. My original intent was to just be part of a team, but St. Paul Audubon needed [ Read More ]
Winter got a tad aggressive last week. It’s been weird, we had snow in early October, so I was prepared for six months of cold and snow. Then it got strangely warm for the rest of October and November and thought, “Terrific, maybe winter won’t be so bad!” Then out of nowhere, we went from [ Read More ]
A sample of waterfowl at Point Douglas right now.
Now let’s talk about some of the more challenging ducks on our aerial waterfowl surveys! Are you ready for some hardcore duck id fun! Sure you are! I placed this photo in my last blog entry about aerial waterfowl identification and asked if anyone could identify them and somebody did! Believe it or not, these [ Read More ]
Doing aerial waterfowl surveys is hard work. It’s a lot like shorebird identification, you can’t just rely on colors, it’s more general size, shape and impression–that’s right giss birding! I’m told that the hard part for many on these surveys is not getting motion sick in the plane. I can’t imagine being motion sick and [ Read More ]
I was planning on Monday being a busy day: wake up and meet the pilot and fellow counter at the small airport at 7am, count ducks for 2 hours, tweak an article due that day, take our new Kia in to our mechanic for the final approval, edit photos, have all my lines memorized because [ Read More ]
So, once a week throughout the fall I will be going up in a plane to do aerial waterfowl surveys for the National Park Service. It is equal parts fun and frustration. For one thing, ring-necked ducks look very snazzy in profile, but from above, they’re very dull looking and hard to id from scaup, [ Read More ]
Saturday I had to go put in a ranger appearance at an event at Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary for an open house they were holding. It’s a great little park that still needs some work, but as more people hang out there, cool things will be found. This park has such interesting features–a closed up [ Read More ]
Blackpoll warbler chips outside my bathroom window. I look through the screen. It chips and flies away as if to say, “You just got served!” I did? I got served. Holy crap, is it on? According to Mike McDowell’s blog, it’s on. Fall migration has totally hit and from looking online, some of the hottest [ Read More ]
