Someone asked on Twitter if this was the year of the sora because the seem to be EVERYWHERE.

This is a sora that was very cooperative at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. I took this before I left for Horicon. I was walking by the Bass Ponds and I could hear several soras when I noticed this bird out and about in the open, not skulking among the vegetation like most soras do.

Here is where the sora was in relation to my scope. Here's what the sora sounds like. Here are some more calls on the Cornell All About Birds page.

Horicon Marsh was loaded with them too. I didn't get any photos of the little water chicken, but I heard them every stop I made that had any sore of marsh. Right now I'm in Utah for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival. When I arrived, I went straight from the airport for some birding at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and it was sora city there as well. I don't remember hearing so many soras all the time--I'll take it. Must mean they found some great breeding habitat and great places to over winter the last few years.

They eat vegetation and invertebrates. This bird was too fast for me to capture it, but I watched it down a few small snails including shell. I wondered if this was a female, snail shells provide calcium for egg laying.

Those these birds are timid, the curve of the beak always gives them a contented look.

Keep your eyes and ears open for these mysterious little water chickens.

I have accepted the snow and have taken to snowshoeing. Partly because my park got a whole bunch of snowshoes this winter and I'm doing some programs one on January 21 and the other on February 19. I need to practice because I have a tendency to walk with my toes out, which inevitably leads to me stepping my shoes and tumbling ass over tea kettle into the snow. I was out with a bunch of rangers at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge last week and it was so cool. We found just about every textbook thing you could find on a snowshoe hike: coyote tracks, otter tracks, rodent tracks that end with feather prints and...

...even a fresh antler shed! That's a couple of my fellow rangers in the photo. The antler had six points on it. That's pretty incredible when you consider how deeply this refuge is embedded in the urban Twin Cities. This shed was so fresh, it hadn't been chewed by any mice yet and it still had a bit of blood on the spot where the antler was attached. Too cool! I think it wasn't even an hour old.

After the snowshoe, I hung out at the feeders at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Check out all the spots of red, the cardinal activity was off the charts. There were even more in the above photo, but at least three were cropped out.

I find comfort in watching the steady stream of activity at bird feeders. Little things like blue jays filling their crops so full with peanuts that you can see the overflow in their open beaks.

I was surprised to see a white-throated sparrow hanging out at the feeders, but for whatever reason, this bird didn't go further south. It's got a good food supply and cover at the refuge. If it can dodge the local sharp-shinned hawk, it just might make it. Here are some other birds visible in the falling snow around the refuge:

Female cardinal (with a female house finch down at the bottom).

Male house finch.