Sax-Zim Winter Birding Festival Part II

It was around zero degrees when the bus pulled away from the Meadowlands Community Center, and as the breath of a couple dozen birders condensed on the cold windows it became apparent that we would need every one of our multiple layers of clothing. If we wanted to see birds we were going to have to ride around all day with the windows open. We were too excited by the promise of owls to mind much.
The bog is an amazing place - hundreds of ruler-flat acres of black spruce and tamarack and sedges. I'm guessing it looks pretty much the way it did a couple hundred years ago, there being more exploitable land so close at hand. Here and there around the perimeter are farms, or more often remnants of farms.

Sax-Zim Winter Birding Festival Part I

So there we are, 25 senior-ish citizens plus a couple of kids in their twenties whose presence and whose passion for nature reassures this old crank that there just might be hope for the world after all. We are equipped with binoculars, cameras, spotting scopes, tripods, field guides and checklists. We are on a school bus in the freezing Minnesota pre-dawn. The bus driver says, "I have to keep the heater set on 'low'. Otherwise the blower shuts down." We don't care. We're tough. We dress in layers. We are going on a field trip.

Boom Shek a Lek a Lek a . . .

This is a picture of a farm field in Aitkin County. You can see that in the field are a number of grayish lumps. Rocks? Clods of dirt? Frozen souveniers of the cattle that were pastured here last summer? Nope. Birds. Sharp-tailed grouse to be exact, gathered here in the middle of February to engage in what my biologist neighbor suggested is probably some sort of pre-mating behavior. Their actual mating behavior normally occurs some weeks further along in the season. That's when these boys will practice the art of seduction by hooting and hollering and stomping and inflating parts of themselves in a crazy and beautiful effort to pass their sharp-tailed genes along to a new generation of dancing birds.

I've Said it a Million Times . . .

I HATE WINTER.
I don't, though, as it turns out. Moonlit nights so cold it hurts to breathe, but a suggestion of wood smoke in the air keeps you sniffing like a beagle anyway and the frozen river's a highway. All you have to do is go out and walk on it. Out. Not in. Out.
Out is the key to winter.

Nemadji Bridge

According to the county transportation department, this bridge is toast. Within two years - sooner, if President Obama's stimulus package stimulates the county transportation department, a lovely little 1920s' work of art will be gone, replaced with goodness knows what. One of the reasons I fell in love with this place was the bridge. It's seen better days, true. A massive early repair erased some of its original grace. Ditto for the reflective signs that obscure its curved abutments. Yet it remains beautiful. I never tire of looking at it. I hope there is a way to persuade them to grant this beauty a stay of execution.



It doesn't look that bad . . .

Pine Siskins

The field guide describes them as, "gregarious little birds." They eat five pounds of food a day. They bully the other birds. Chickadees and nuthatches have mostly been driven from the feeders and even the blue jays hesitate before attempting to steal a seed from this pack of flying piranhas.
Cute, though.

Beaver Shots

From about 1550 until 1850, felt hats were fashionable in much of Europe and the felt hat industry became the driving force behind the fur trade. By the late 1500's, the beaver was extinct in Western Europe and was close to extinction in Scandinavia and Russia. The North American fur trade became a new source and kept the fashion going for another 200 years.
www.whiteoak.org





Nice warm hats can be made from recycled soda bottles. Ditto for coats and mittens and mukluks. Maybe it's time we let the critters alone.

BEARGREASE! It's all about the dogs.

Nemadji River Cranberries

Remember that scene in Dr. Zhivago where the Bolsheviks come marching into the dark streets of Moscow and you'd hardly know the film was in color if it weren't for the supersaturated red of their flag? Welcome to Minnesota in November.

Open season in two days YAY!

Spring(ing) Turkey

After an extended hiatus minndoc returns because it would be wrong to keep Galliforme Baryshnikov from his public.

They Only Live One Week