Dear Non Birding Bill,
We've given this whole marriage thing one heck of a try. I'm a birder, you're not and hilarity ensues, we've put in a good eleven years and are closing in on 12--we've given it the old college try. However, after spending some time in Panama, I regret to inform you that I most likely will not be returning home.
First of all, the feeder birds are off the hook--here we have a green honeycreeper (creeping up on some bananas) that I got with the Wingscapes camera coming in to Canopy Lodge. What can I say, I'm in love with this crazy green fella. The temperatures at the lodge are surprisingly cool, although humid, but I think I can live with that for the sake of such colorful birds.
You might think that I'm bluffing since I love the brown birds so much, but never fear there are brown birds here too. Above we have a couple of broad-bill euphonia next to a very brown clay-colored robin (with blue-gray tanagers in the back). And look at the mashed banana stuck on the bottom mandible of the euphonia--such lovely bird shenanigans.
At the moment, I'm at Canopy Tower and this is the view from the top--look at those mountains covered in green. I love snow, but living in Minnesota, I've experienced my share. I think all this green will suit me.
And in the morning, there are toucans to serenade me. They have yet to use their noses to direct me to sugary rings of cereal or to any dark Irish stout, but they are pleasant to see lurking about the canopy. And life here is leisurely! We start with an early breakfast, do some birding, come back for lunch, have a siesta, do a tiny bit more of birding, have dinner, maybe a drink and then off to bed to begin the day anew. I love this birding with breaks--it's so relaxing, no more of this go and go and go and go all day for me--I'm all for this imposed afternoon napping system.
I'm typing this to you from the comfort and security of my hammock, where my digiscoping equipment is at the perfect angle to catch whatever may fly by the open window...
...or swing by as did this howler monkey who is working its way in the trees around the tower. So we are clear, it's not that I'm leaving you for Raúl Arias de Para ( the man who owns Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge and turned them into a birder's version of Disney Land) he has a lovely wife. I'm not even leaving you for my guide Carlos (even though he did give me a great poptoo yesterday).
Think of this as me joining a birding order along the lines of a strange nunnery where all I do is go out into the rainforest, find birds and taking photos of them like this above linneated woodpecker (and in the case of the tinamou, take video). It's been fun and I appreciate all the times you tried to enjoy birds. Go out and find yourself a nice girl who isn't covered in chigger bites.
Because I have so many sloth photos, I have to post a bit more on them--right? I know this is a birding blog, but c'mon--sloths are so cool, so iconic, attention must be paid! I wonder, are they big enough to be considered charismatic megafauna? They are bigger than many mammals and they have a lot of charisma...
We would have walked right under the sloth completely unawares by Tino our guide from Canopy Lodge. In all the excitement, I forget what bird we had just been watching when Tino nonchalantly pointed upwards and said, "Sloth." Our small group went bonkers and rightfully so. We jockeyed scopes and necks to get in the perfect position to view the sloth and I wanted to get photos.
First, it took a while to get an angle where the face was easy to see. Second, being sloth, they move rather slowly, it's going to take awhile for that head to move your way. My first several photos are of sloth tocks.
But for a sloth, this one was incredibly active and thanks to him for being in this position, we found out he was a male--apparently male sloth have this kind of shaven patch with a stripe and orange fur. It almost looked like he had some sort of odd tattoo.
But as I said, he was active and so when he would and face us, he had a knack obscuring that beautiful and aimiable looking face with leaves. Dear sloth, you are doing a terrible job of living up to your species name.
Gradually, he moved to a more open spot, this time with branches, but at least no leaves and you could see that awesome sloth face.
Then he found a spot and began a slow errand of scratching various parts of his body. He used those long three toes (incidentally, Tino said that he was a brown-throated sloth), you could practically hear him go, "Eh, eh, eh" as he scratched.
I am in love with birding at Canopy Lodge! Right now I am blogging from the outdoor library while being serenaded by a rushing stream, frogs and something that sounds like a screech owl but I just learned is actually a type of toad, a bufo marinus (Yo, Non Birding Bill--that's a Cane Toad to you--lol). The birding is leisurely, this is not like one of the media trips that I sometimes take and it's go go GO! There's ciesta time between trips, there's decent internet access, there are things like a herd of blue-gray tanagers at the feeders:
I can't believe it has taken me this long to figure out to bring the Wingscapes camera on my trips. It took over 1300 photos today and most of them are awesome--check out all those freakin' blue-gray tanagers. There were a total of 20 in this particular flock. It's like a tray full of bluebirds.
I think the guides here are going to spoil me rotten. Today, our guide Tino (who is a living, breathing iPod, he can whistle just about every bird in Panama) got all of us our target birds. As soon as he had his scope set on a bird, he'd set mine up in three seconds flat--and my scope is a different brand. I was able to digiscope way more this trip because of him.
Like this blue-capped motmot that Tino found lurking in the canopy. I hardly saw motmots on my trip to Guatemala (heard them like crazy, but rarely saw them). Today, my first day, I have seen three. I'm going to hold off on photos of the other two in the hopes that I get better ones.
The views when we can see through the canopy are outstanding, we're surrounded by mountains and humidity--good grief, my hair hasn't been this big since 1992. That's the nice thing about humidity for me. My hair can go either straight or wavy depending on the type of product I put in, so I usually have to decide what to do with my hair in the morning. Here, humidity decides for me and doesn't take "no" for an answer. Everything is so green and so noisy. In Minnesota, all is white and silent: no leaves rustling in wind, the water is all frozen so no babbling stream--same goes for frogs and toads. Ah, nature noise, I love it so.
And, I was going to hold off an showing this photo but I'm too excited:
I haven't been in Panama for 24 hours and I walked under a wild sloth and digiscoped the cute little bugger! And you can that this is a three toed sloth. Oh sloth, you look so amiable, so unlike the disapproving rabbit I come home to every night. It moved slow, it stretched up, it half-heartedly scratched its wrist (which makes me now wonder if sloth ever get bot flies), it just did all the slothy things you would hope a sloth would do on a nature program. I wanted to ask for his autograph. I can't believe we got a sloth so soon.
I can't wait to see what tomorrow (and the rest of my time here holds). Be prepared for random photos from my Wingscapes Cam. I have lots and need to share.
Good morning! I have some internets while down in Central America! I'm currently staying in Canopy Lodge, owned by the same man who owns Canopy Tower--I have died and gone to birder heaven. This man has completely designed this place with birders and digiscopers (or photographers for that matter) in mind.
Since I left Minnesota when it was 4 degrees Fahrenheit, my body had a fitful night adjusting to the all humidity all the time but now, I think the sweat has finally slowed to a trickle. Today, I am ambling about getting acquainted with the local birds. Here are some of my breakfast companions:
Isn't that a dyNOmite lookin' bird?? For the non birders of this blog, this is not some crazy ass brown-headed cowbird, this is a chestnut-headed oropendola--yeah, I can't pronounce it either.
And for those who always thought the scarlet tanager was the bees knees, check out the tanagers coming to the banana feeder:
Here we have a crimson-backed tanager and a yellow-rumped tanager sharing some banana!
This place is fantastic--everything is open air. My room has screens so at night I'm serenaded by frogs, insects and a whole host of creatures I can't begin to identify. Of course, I try to figure them out which leads to a hard time getting to sleep. I think I'm going to love having this as my office for the next week or so.
As I type this entry, this is what the snow cloud RADAR looks like from KSTP. Non Birding Bill and I live in Minneapolis. The surrounding clouds kind of look like Oogie Boogie Man from The Nightmare Before Christmas about to nom us up. We may also be feeling the benefits of the bubble effect, sometimes big storms pass around the Twin Cities rather than right through. I am suspicious of the hype with this storm. Suspicious that we will not get the 24 inches predicted all week. NBB says I'm crazy to doubt this, but I'll believe Snomaggedon when I see it.
I thought I'd go out and do some birding before the pending Snowpacolypse today. I wanted to see if I could find a snowy owl at the Minneapolis St Paul Airport but did not--got totally skunked. All I found were eagles and a few snow buntings. I ran into my buddy Linda and her husband and she told me about an eastern screech-owl that was visible from one of the trails at Minnehaha Park.
When I arrived at the park, I could see the true spirit of the Minnesota. There was an artist out with his easel set up and all his layers appropriately applied so he could do a landscape in oils of the frozen creek. It was twenty-nine degrees, so with some well placed SmartWool socks, he could be quite comfortable while he painted the landscape with the snow that we have already accumulated this month. I searched the surrounding tree based on Linda's instructions. I scanned for every potential cavity then was surprised when I found the owl roosting in a cavity up above the artist! The artist's back was to the owl, he had no idea of the tiny silent sentry keeping watch while he worked his oils.
I got a few photos of the gray phase eastern screech-owl (I even took a photo with by hand holding my Blackberry to my scope and sent it to Twitter), then went over to the artist to point out the owl. I think he was expecting something larger, but still found it cool. I know screeches are urban owls, years ago there was a pair of red phases nesting a few blocks from our apartment. This bird seemed very used to this spot, I noted the well worn sledding tracks right beneath and around the tree with the owl's roost--this owl is very used to people.
Trees aren't the only place to look for screech-owls. Yesterday, I got a photo in my inbox. Someone had a surprise roosting in the slot for their daily newspaper below the mailbox:
A red phase eastern screech-owl (the same species I saw, but just a different color variation). I did not take this photo. The photographer lives in the Midwest but would prefer that their name not show up on the Internet. Screech owls naturally nest and roost in old woodpecker cavities, kestrel boxes or wood duck boxes. Sometimes, if they can't find a cavity, they make do with an unusual structure. Another reason to put up a wood duck box or let old trees with cavities stay up if they are in a spot that won't risk damage to your home.
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 someone to lead the count and I thought it would be fun to do a section that was part of the National Park that I work for. We mainly worked the Lilydale Park section. I had great volunteers and it was a treat to meet some new local birders. It was an easy going group and I am so grateful to John who introduced me to Jerabek's Bakery (my new favorite bakery and a must visit if you are in St. Paul). I requested that we meet before dawn at 6:30am and everyone did. We tried to do an owl survey and got completely skunked. I played calls for saw-whets, eastern screech, barred, and great horned (keep that in mind for later in this post). However, even though we were nooged on owls, we were rewarded with excellent views of river otters rolling around in an open patch of water on Pickerel Lake--bonus! It was too dark for photos, but man what cool mammals to watching through the scope in the dark (thank you Swarovski for that most excellent light gathering ability).
Lilydale is an interesting little park in our metro area and one that I'm loving more and more. For one thing, you can get permits to go fossil hunting there--how cool is my town? You can go fossil hunting in the Twin Cities metro area! The bluffs at Lilydale are chock full of St Paul brickyard history as well as geologic history. You can see three distinct layers of rock from when this used to be part of an ocean: sandstone, limestone and shale. Many come to look for the fossils of ancient sea life in the shale and limestone. Water trickles through and creates lovely ice falls which attracts a few climbers in winter. We were lucky to get a day for our count that had temperatures in the teens and twenties. When we stood still it felt chilly, but as we climbed the hill in Lilydale, we stayed warm.
Robins were our most common species (if you don't count the ginormous flock we tallied in downtown St Paul). This interesting Robin was found in a yard by one of my team members--it's lacking pigment in some of its feathers. It's not leucisitic--the colors are not washed out, it's just some of the feathers are white. Scientifically, something cannot be a partial albino--it's one or the other, there is no in between. There are a lot of names tossed around out there, but no one has come up with an easy term to call a bird with patches of pure white, other than to say that the bird lacks pigment in some feathers.
Here is the front of the robin--you can see it was lacking some pigment on its breast feathers as well.
We did see quite a few red-tailed hawks like the above immature bird. I was surprised that we did not get any Cooper's hawks, I usually see one at Lilydale, but they remained hidden. This bird was actively hunting the field near the boat launch off of Shepherd Road.
One of our goals was to get the down St. Paul peregrines included on our count. I chuckled as I scanned a peregrine box on the Landmark Center that had a red-tailed hawk perched on it.
We did eventually find some peregrines, so I was happy we kept up that goal.
While we were out documenting as many bird species as we could, we were surprised to find a muskrat out and about on the ice. This little mammal should be tucked away in a little mound in a marsh, sleeping away the winter. This one was on ice right in downtown St Paul, not near too many places for a muskrat den.
Just as I was thinking, "Wow, that's an easy target for an eagle," one showed up. The blue arrow is the muskrat, the red arrow is a bald eagle. Can you see the eagle's landing gear down? The muskrat saw the eagle and smartly slid into the water.
The bald eagle landed on the ice and watched the edge where the muskrat dove into the Mississippi River. Then a moment later--the muskrat popped back up on the ice. The eagle stared, almost as if assessing the situation. The muskrat behaved as though the eagle was not there. The watched intently. I wondered if it realized that if it spread its wings and went for the muskrat, that it would easily see the predator and have time to dive back into the river. The muskrat trundled along, turned and suddenly seemed to notice the eagle. It hopped a little (almost as if it said, "DOH!") and plopped again into the river and hightailed it towards a separate piece of ice. The eagle remained on the ice for quite some time. So long, that we had to leave to count other birds.
After we did Lilydale Park and downtown St. Paul, some of my group went home (understandable, it was a long day). The remaining group went out to cruise the neighborhoods for bird feeders and a few species we missed at the park--like turkeys. We found a huge flock of 12 marauding a rather upscale neighborhood. By the end of the afternoon, I looked at the time, I only had about an hour before I had to work an evening shift at the park service and the light was fast fading. We made one more pass at the park.
We passed some trees that I thought looked good for saw-whet owls. A cedar and a pine. I left my scope in the trunk and said, "That will guarantee we'll see something good." We walked underneath the trees and there was quite a bit of small owl poop. I was convinced if we stared at the cedar long enough, a saw-whet owl would materialize. Suddenly, we heard a flock of very angry chickadees. I looked in the direction of the sound...I saw a lone cedar tree. "That's where the saw-whet is, let's go," I said.
We crossed the street and approached the tree surrounded by alarmed chickadees. We were within about 30 feet of the cedar and a medium sized owl flushed from the cedar. I saw distinct buff panels on the wings and realized instantly what we flushed--a long-eared owl. It perched in some thick branches nearby, I got a quick look at the slender bird and it flew further away. DOH!
I wasn't expecting a long-eared. If I had, I would have approached that cedar in a different way, they are so cagey. We looked at the base of the cedar it was perched in and found much larger poop marks and a fresh pellet. I have Tuesday off, I might head back to Lilydale and see if I can get it in the scope and take a photo.
All and all, it was a great day. I was lucky to have such a great group to count birds with and I appreciated all of their help. One was even a fellow beekeeper--loved to meet someone else working the hives.
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 40 degree weather to below zero and single digits in one night--no build up, just blammo: booger freezing cold. On the upside, all the area lakes froze up in a hurry making places where water stays open popular with the remaining waterfowl. One particular hot spot this time of year is Douglas Point Park. This is where the Mississippi River meets with the St. Croix River on the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. I love it for a couple of reasons. One--it's in the boundaries of the National Park I work for and two--it's a hop, skip and a jump away from Carpenter Nature Center. The water here stays open and it corrals some of the waterfowl. I headed out there on Friday.
When I arrived, there was still a bit of a mist on the river and some of the Canada geese were covered in frost on the back. See the guy towards the bottom of the photo just covered in frosty white on the back? I always do wonder about ducks and geese in cold water. Yeah, I get that feathers are a terrific insulator and that birds have a different circulatory system and metabolism than humans so they handle cold in a way that I simply cannot understand--but damn, thats incredible to witness.
The mix was mostly Canada geese and goldeneye. The goldeneye crack me up, as soon as they realize a scope is on them, they dive or take off. I love this shot above of Canada geese and mallards and one lone lurking male common goldeneye coming up after diving under. Isn't he just a little Mr. Lurky McLurk Lurk!
Goldeneyes are just awesome little diving ducks. We'd seen a ton of them on our waterfowl surveys this fall. It was a treat just to hang out and watch a big section of waterfowl and not have to worry about counting them or identifying them in a hurry. But I had plenty of time scan and got a kick out what I found:
Like the stealthy pintail male behind the Canada goose in the upper right hand corner. It's fun to find a big stretch of waterfowl which on the surface look like a ton of Canada geese only to scan and find a few different guys mixed in.
But the big excitement of the day was the above male harlequin duck that was floating around the area--even the Canada geese seem to look like, "What the duck is that??"
This duck is exciting on several levels. Number one: it's a cool looking duck--a male in full on adult plumage. When I tell my non birding friends about this exciting bird, I say, "It's blue and white duck!" They seem to understand. As a matter of fact, I'm typing this blog entry backstage during our Golden Girls Christmas Carol and the other actors agree that he is very, very sweet.
Just because the water stays open doesn't mean this is the safest place there is. Bald eagles patrol this spot regularly and both adults and immature eagles take pot shots at the waterfowl. I digiscoped the above bird actively hunting and it was zeroing in on some goldeneye. I've not seen an eagle take a dive at the harlequin. I wonder if Minnesota and Wisconsin eagles think blue ducks "just aren't right" and avoid diving for it? Nah, I've seen them eat dead chickens mixed in with chicken manure, I don't think their standards are that high. Must be one evasive harlequin duck.
For some reason, this photo reminds me of a Huey Lewis and the News album cover. There were quite a few trumpeters mixed in with all the other waterfowl. It was fun to hear their trumpet calls rise above the over a thousand or so Canada geese. Since this spot was part of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, I asked my boss if I could work some of the day today at Point Douglas to help people watch the waterfowl. He bought it or...I should say, he agreed that it would be a great idea. I thought I would interact with mostly with birders from Minnesota and Wisconsin, but a vast majority of the people I spoke to just happened to be driving along the river and stopping for photos of the swans, completely unaware of the harlequin duck or other waterfowl. The harlequin didn't show up to Point Douglas while I was there in the morning, but there are still quite a few open spots around Prescott, WI. As the ice closes in further, people should have a better chance of seeing him this winter.
Word spread from some other birders that a long-tailed duck was seen along the Mississippi River in South St Paul on the corners of Grand Avenue and Hardman so on my way back to the visitor center, I stopped by to look for it. There were quite a few common mergansers working the shrinking patches of open water.
Sure enough, you could see it--she's the bird laying flat on the water. The other two are male common mergansers.
She's the opposite of the male harlequin, this is a female long-tailed duck. Still cool to see a rare bird, but not as striking as the male. This is a bird that I have a tough time convincing my non birding friends is a cool find. Word spread on the birding trail that a white-winged scoter was seen here earlier in the morning. I wanted to walk along the trail and look for it, but I had to get back to the visitor center--all in all, not a bad weekend for waterfowl.
I really hate car shopping. When we had to go through the process a few weeks ago, I heard through the MN birding grapevine that several northern hawk owls were reported in northern Minnesota, I decided a day up to Sax Zim Bog with my good friend Amber would be my reward. Besides, what better way to get to know our Kia Pet (the named dubbed to our very beige vehicle because it looks like a Chia Pet before the grass grows out) than by taking it on an all day birding trip?
Since daylight is short, Amber and I left the Twin Cities early to arrive at Sax Zim Bog just after sunrise and get some great photography light. Our plan seemed to work. The light was great when we arrived, and dark clouds in the distance only enhanced the bog's colorful landscape.
Alas, the sun was a total tease and soon hid behind clouds that brought light snow. On the upside, I got to really test out the Kia Pet's brakes and refamiliarize myself with driving on snow and a few patches of black ice. Whoopee, I stayed out of the ditches. I do laugh, we've had this vehicle for a couple weeks now and I still drive it like our old sensitive Saturn, like pausing before I press the gas to go in reverse. You had to give the Saturn a minute to think about it or she wouldn't reverse or would jerk violently into it. I forget with this car, I reverse without pause. Ah, the joy of driving a reliable car! But back to birding the bog...
We got a northern hawk owl right away near the corner of 7 & 133 near Meadowlands. If you are interested, there's a google map of where northern hawk owls have been reported which members of the Minnesota Ornithologists' Union add sightings to help those who visit the bog. There appears to be a small irruption of hawk owls this year (perhaps a crash in the vole population on their breeding grounds, pushing quite a few owls south into Minnesota). It's not on the scale of the owl irruption of 2004/2005 but we will never see the likes of that again...or at least not in our lifetime.
This bird put on quite a show for us, as it was actively hunting. It dove down into the grasses, we could see it scurry though and then fly back up. This spot is right next to some railroad tracks and is a road that's used quite a bit in the bog. I'm always fascinated by an owl's ability to hear any prey in a spot like that. I must say, I'm loving the Nikon D40 for digiscoping. This photo turned out way better than it should have considering how low the light conditions were. In the past I've used point and shoot cameras for digiscoping with my Swarovski scope and I would have gotten blogable photo, but nothing this clear on a cloudy day. We ended up seeing a second northern hawk owl as we meandered around the bog, but it was much further away from the road and flew off to parts unknown. I couldn't believe we got our target bird so early.
But the blog is not just about owls, there are so many great birds to find this time of year!
We used the MOU's Sax Zim Bog site maps (particularly the Birding Roads tab) and went looking for birds. Any time we saw a flock of birds land nearby, we pulled over to investigate. We found a small flock of white-winged crossbills working their way through.
We also saw about a dozen rough-legged hawks--each one different (we even saw a couple of dark morph birds). We saw many bald eagles as well but we did note that we did not see any red-tailed hawks, interesting change of buteos. The rough legs are very cagey and hard to get photos of. No matter how far away you park, as soon as the scope is trained on them, they poop (a sure sign they are about to fly)...
This is a different bird than the one perched above--very dark, almost a dark morph. It's cool to see them in so many different color variations. One of the things I love about living in Minnesota is that a day's drive at the right time of year can give you a completely different set of birds. In the Twin Cities, we're loaded with red-tailed hawks. A two and half hour drive north and we're surrounded by rough-legged hawks. Awesome to have a change of pace.
Speaking of a change of pace, Amber and I started following another large flock of birds. When they landed, I rolled down the car windows and was excited to hear the louder and deeper trills of bohemian waxwings.
Here's a closer photo of them. Can you spot the differences between these and a cedar waxwing? If you follow this link, you'll see photos of cedars--they have white butts. The above bohemians have rusty butts. Bohemians also have a red and white patch on their wings. So, cool--a different type of waxwing too! I tried to get a video so you could hear the difference in their calls, but the wind blocks it a bit:
We drove down Admiral Road where a deer carcass is usually hung. In the past this has been a great spot for all sorts of birds. Amber and I found that a deer carcass was already up. Black-capped chickadees and down woodpeckers snuck it for bits of fat and meat.
As did about five gray jays (who kind of look like a balding chickadee on steroids). I showed this video to Non Birding Bill and he said it reminded him of Hannibal Lecter which led to this photo caption. There ended up being about five gray jays who came in for the food source. It was interesting to watch the difference in these jays, the crept in quietly like the snow for the food. I'm so used to blue jays--or even green jays or Steller's jays who noisily announce their presence before coming into a feeding station. These birds swooped in secretively, very unjay-like.
I loved the contrast of the ragged, bloody cage compared to the soft feathery gray of the jay. I took a ton of photos, but the wind picked up at this point and my eyes were watering, I could barely focus my scope.
We also came across several flocks of common redpolls feeding on birch seeds. It was great to see them eating on a natural food source and not a feeder (not that I won't take them at a feeder, but I read they eat birch seeds, I enjoy seeing a bird doing what a researcher tells me they do). We've already had pine siskins show up at Mr. Neil's. I wonder if we'll get redpolls too?
We also stopped at one of the feeding stations open for public viewing at the bog (which was innundated with red-breasted nuthatches). One of the residents has been kind enough to put bird feeders at the end of their driveway and you can park across the street and stand at the end of the driveway and enjoy the birds. In the past, this has been chock full of birds. She came out to greet us and said they had just put the feeders up so the birds were just discovering it. There's normally a little box requesting donations for bird food, she hadn't even had time to put that out yet (so we put a few bucks in her mailbox as a thank you).
All in all it was a GREAT day. We didn't see every bird possible--no boreal chickadee or great gray owl so Amber and I decided that we're going to have to take another day and bird the crap out of the bog.
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 cave that is of spiritual significance for Native Americans, caves that used to store beer for the North Star Brewery built in the 1850s (the brewery was later bought by Jacob Schmidt). In the late 1880s the area was used as an industrial area and rail yard. It was turned into a park in 2005 and yes, it needs some work--buckthorn and garlic mustard city and the old railroad yard has left all kinds of nasty things in the soil, but a dedicated group of volunteers has been working hard to turn it around and over the years, this will be a bright gem in the Twin Cities park system.
Here's a young male kestrel who was on patrol for food in the area. He was mobbed by a few goldfinches but he mobbed a Cooper's hawk when it flew through--no one is going to partake of his food source! I spent most of my time with local birder and excellent bird guide for St Paul Audubon, Julian Sellers. I noticed he had photos of an orchard oriole out and I remembered that this past spring when I was Bruce Vento, we heard an orchard oriole singing on territory. Julian said that he and his wife saw the male this summer feeding three young! That's a great bird for an urban area and for this new park.
At first, we didn't see too much in the way of birds, which surprised me since Carpenter Nature Center was so full of migrants on the move the day before. But between the nearby highway and active railroad tracks, hearing chip notes is a challenge. I walked over towards the tracks and found this grassy area to be CHOCK full of birds.
Mostly eastern bluebirds--they were all over and scattered about. Not sure if they were after grasses or lethargic grasshoppers hidden amidst the grass and low to the ground.
House finches and sparrows were mixed in with the bluebirds. Above are a couple of female sparrows and a chipping sparrow. You may be saying to yourself, "Hey, that chipping sparrow doesn't look like the ones I see at my feeder in the summer." But they change color and kind of look like clay-colored sparrows in the fall. There were also white-throated sparrows, Lincoln's sparrows and fox sparrows mixed in.
The real fun were all the goldfinches. And boy do they hide well in their brownish plumage! I would walk down a path completely unaware and then a big flock would explode out of the grasses around me. But soon enough, one finch would return to the food source and others would follow.
I think these are common sunflower heads, but I'm not sure. Whatever they were--the goldfinches were digging it. If you didn't know they were there, they totally blended in despite their furious feasting.
It's a great little park and again, I think we're going to see some great birds there the more people check it out.
As I type this entry, this is what the snow cloud RADAR looks like from KSTP. Non Birding Bill and I live in Minneapolis. The surrounding clouds kind of look like 
We also stopped at one of the feeding stations open for public viewing at the bog (which was innundated with red-breasted nuthatches). One of the residents has been kind enough to put bird feeders at the end of their driveway and you can park across the street and stand at the end of the driveway and enjoy the birds. In the past, this has been 
