Christmas Bird Count

We gathered together and were assigned slices of a pie circling the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge.  We were paired two young fellers. How young?  So young they didn't have drivers licenses yet.  I was very surprised to have such young men at the bird count.  Usually everyone is 55 plus.  These two track athletes were great fun to bird with.  They had plenty of energy and were kind enough to laugh at my jokes.  We spent most of our time driving around our assigned area.  We got out of the car a couple times to look closely at open water for ducks. We didn't find any ducks but we did see a deer swimming in the Saint Francis river trying to climb out of the frigid stream. Thinking we might be seeing an otter, we walked toward it and the deer popped out of the water and took off running.  Did we save the deer's life?  I can't say for sure that we did but we might have so that counts.  We stopped by Elk Lake to look for ducks. Ice had recently formed and it looked pretty thick near the shore. We took a step or two onto the lake.  Did you know that when you throw a rock onto bare ice it makes a most bizarre reverberating sound at every bounce?  Both young men and old ladies enjoy throwing rocks onto a frozen lake.  At one point one of the boys said in a discouraged tone, "Oh, another blue jay?  Now we're up to 40 of those."  I countered with, "Lets aim for 100 blue jays!"  Turned out that was a good number of blue jays to shoot for because we came up with 92 and the closer to 100 we got the more exciting each one was.  The day was cold and sunny with absolutely no wind at all. Out bird totals were 11 turkeys, 4 bald eagles, 1 red tailed hawk, 2 rock pigeons, 5 red bellied woodpeckers, 2 downy woodpeckers, 1 hairy woodpecker, 4 pileated wood peckers, 92 blue jays, 7 American Crows, 1 Common raven, 25 black capped chickadees, 3 white breasted nuthatch, 33 American robins, 21 cedar waxwings, 3 American tree sparrows, 42 dark eyed juncos, 5 Northern Cardinal, 1 red winged blackbird, 9 American goldfinch and 1 great blue heron (not 100% sure about that last one).  Twenty one species seen; not too shabby!