Cold and Windy Birding

Today my bird class went to the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. I've been out the past two nights doing artistic things (more on that later) and was not real excited to get up at 5:15 this morning, especially when I saw snow on the ground, but I'm glad I went. I wore long underwear, jeans and wind pants, 4 shirts and a winter coat and I didn't get too cold. Let see, we only saw about 55 species - very low for Migratory Bird Day. The wind was not helpful. If I put my hood up my ears were warm but I couldn't hear anything over the sound of the wind. We saw Canadian geese with goslings, ring billed ducks, mallards, blue wing teal, trumpeter swans, eagles, a raven, crows, red winged blackbirds, a merlin (very cool falcon but not a good look at it), goldfinch, yellow rumped warblers, yellow warbler, Palm warbler, song sparrow, lots of good looks at lark sparrows, swamp sparrow, chipping sparrow, pheasant, rose breasted grossbeak, turkey, killdeer, blue jay, robins, goldfinch, towhee, blue gray gnatcatcher, and brown thrasher. The most exciting sighting for me was the belted kingfisher. We got great long and close looks at the kingfisher. We saw him fishing too. A fellow birder says the kingfisher nests in a hole 10-15 feet deep. Can you imagine a bird digging that deep of a hole? We also heard grouse drumming but didn't see them. I was excited to hear them drumming. On the ground we saw wildflowers in bloom. Hoary puccoon and columbine were flowering and the lupines were just starting to blossom. Some of the ferns had fiddle heads. We finished our nature reverence about noon and it was sleeting at that time.