Bird Trip

It feels like this week has been at least 18 days long.  When I took my dirty laundry out of my hamper to wash clothes, I was surprised to see an outfit that I swore I wore more than a week ago.  I had a really busy week.  It didn't help that I worked 15 1/2 hours yesterday (which is very unusual for me) and had to get up early this morning for bird class. Oh, the alarm clock seemed especially cruel at 6 a.m.  But I am glad I got up because we saw a lot of cool birds at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge.  We saw a lot of red winged blackbirds who fill up the air with sounds.  We saw robins, song sparrows, lark sparrows, a Harris sparrow, a meadowlark, a Cooper's hawk, a bald eagle, a kestrel, several Eastern towhees, goldfinches, tree swallows, barn swallows, common yellow throat, yellow rumped warblers, two yellow warblers, Canadian geese, blue winged teal, mallards, trumpeter swans, sandhill cranes, a great blue heron, a kingfisher, phoebe, morning doves, ring necked ducks, a pied billed grebe, blue jays, cowbirds, lesser yellow legs, killdeer, a Tennessee warbler, 4 kingbirds, half a dozen brown thrashers, a yellow eyed vireo, a rose breasted gross beak, scaup, and, last but not least, the piece de resistance, the ultimate bird sighting of the day, a great horned owl.  It was 11 a.m. and we had been birding for four hours already.  We came to mile 6 on the wildlife drive.  Our driver quietly said, "Owl."  She uncharacteristically jerked the car to a stop by slamming the transmission into park.  She was out of her Buick LeSabre and had her spotting scope out of the trunk in one swift motion.  Normally she doesn't move this fast.  There she had the great horned owl (that I could not even find with my binoculars yet) in the spotting scope. All four of us had a great look at it.  The other and larger half of our group had to run to the gas station because they were nearly out of gas.  So they missed seeing this owl.  As I watched in the scope, the yellow eyed owl acted nervous. I think he knew we were watching.  He flew off his curved branch through the woods and onto a lower position where we couldn't see him.  We praised and hugged our teacher for this owl sighting.  What an exciting moment. Some people see owls in the wild all the time.  I don't.  For me, this was very special.