Birding in Duluth

Stoney Point - off Alseth Road and the Scenic Drive north of Duluth

The ice broke into blue plates.

This lake ice is easier to see through than the window of the school bus I was on.  A speck of snow gives me that Trident sparkle.

It's crazy that the harbor has frozen.  I could walk to Bayfield but it would be a long drive home without a car.

The ice is spookily beautiful.

Two birders walk up the mound of built up ice.

The ice is pretty.

A pine marten walked by here probably sniffing around in all the ice holes.

The wind was blowing hard here at Canal Park.

Mallards swim by.

This morning was another bird field trip; this one in Duluth.  When the alarm went off I thought to myself, "Do I really want to do this?  Will the birds in Duluth top staying in this warm bed?"  I convinced myself that it would be worth my while to go birding.  We boarded the school buses at the Miller Hill Mall and drove out to the Hartley Nature Center.  The temperature was -13 degrees; windchill of -33 degrees F.  We walked around the nature center and saw two black capped chickadees.  With sixty pairs of binoculars pointed at two black capped chickadees, again I thought, "Is this really worth it?"  We piled back on the buses.  Every few minutes we had to scrape the ice off the windows with our scrapers.  We drove past a soccer field where a snowy owl was but wasn't here today.  Ok, this was becoming disappointing.  We drove down a residential neighborhood where we spotted another hawk owl sitting in a tree.  Those hawk owls are so tiny it's hard to see them very clearly.  On the other hand, hawk owls and snowy owls tend to stay in the same area making it easy to find them.  Then we went on a long ride north of Duluth on the scenic drive.  We turned on Alseth Road and got out of the buses.  It was cold.  We could walk along the road or walk through the snow down the shore and onto the lake.  Forget birding.  I wanted to walk down on the lake.  Another birder picked up a plate of ice and had his photo taken.  I asked him to take my photo too.  As I bent over to pick up a plate of ice, I didn't notice that my camera fell out of my pocket into the snow.  Lucky for me the snow was so cold it wasn't wet and the strap on the camera was poking out.  I retrieved my camera and he took my photo.  Then he told me to hold it up to my face.  My face came out clearer that I thought it would because from my point of view everything was blurry.  I had fun breaking plates of ice for a while - I take pleasure in destruction sometimes.  We found some tracks.  I asked what they were.  Two fellow birders, one an environmental education instructor in Ely and the other a PhD student in environmental education at UMD debated on whether it was a pine marten, a long tailed weasel or a short tailed weasel. The final decision was a pine marten.  How lucky am I to be surrounded by people who can debate these tracks in the snow!  We got really cold out there and walked back to the buses after a half hour or so.  The people who stayed on the road saw rock pigeons, a crow and ravens.  I made the right choice on walking onto the lake.  Spirits up now, we drove into Wisconsin to the Superior landfill.  We were looking for gulls.  We saw a few gulls flying around along with some ravens.  The ravens were displaying courtship behavior by flying in tandem.  We stood in the cold for a long time looking at the herring fulls.  Suddenly hundreds of gulls flew out of the landfill.  Four gulls looked different.  Two were larger and darker and they were greater black backed gulls.  Two were whiter and they were glacous gulls. It sure was nice to have gull experts around to point out the differences.  We ate lunch on the bus.  After lunch we drove to Canal Park.  The wind was really strong out there.  In the open water beneath the lift bridge we saw mallards, common mergansers, and common golden eyes.  And back to the Miller Hill Mall we traveled.  I made some friends on this trip; a nice lady from Pittsburgh, a nice couple from Eau Claire who used to live in Northfield, another couple from Richfield, a man from England, and a woman from Georgia.  Many of the people were older like me.  We joked about arthritis medications.  One older woman from St. Paul, usually very proper and polite, would talk sexy when ever she saw a life bird.  "Hello big boy," she'd say flirtatiously, "What a looker you are!  Show me some more leg."  She cracked me up.  She wants me to come to a warbler weekend at Frontenac State Park in May.  Maybe I will!