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| A covered bridge over a wetland in Sherburne County. What do you think? A Clint Eastwood fan? |
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| This is one of my favorite places in our territory. I think snow next to open water is so pretty. |
On Saturday a sibling and I went to the Christmas Bird Count at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. About 30 people participated. We were assigned to the southeast slice of the pie with two other woman. One woman we birded the same section with last year and this time she brought a friend. These are two expert birders. They know their birds. These women are so into birding that they drove from their homes in a northern St. Paul suburb to Holdingford last weekend just to see and take pictures of a snowy owl. I wish I could have gone with them. We started birding at 7:30 and finished up at 1 p.m. We saw 24 species of birds. Here's the list: 12 crows, 12 robins, 40 blue jays, 38 black capped chickadees, 2 hairy woodpeckers, 11 white breasted nuthatches, 3 downy woodpeckers, 2 red bellied woodpeckers, 14 morning doves, 8 cardinals, 3 mallards, 24 dark eyes juncos, 3 tree sparrows, 52 rock pigeons, 2 red breasted nuthatches, 3 starlings, 1 red shouldered hawk, 4 bald eagles, 28 turkeys, 1 female red winged blackbird (she must have forgot to migrate!), 63 cedar waxwings, 1 pileated woodpecker, and 1 northern flicker. We drove around the neighborhoods looking first for bird, then bird feeders, and finally bird feeders with food in them. Lots of people have feeders but only a few kept them full on this day. We got a little frustrated with the empty feeders. We even tried to scout out an empty lot where we could put up some feeders and keep them full before next year's Christmas bird count. We saw one bird that had us stumped for a long time. We could see it perched on a branch all fluffed out. We all got out of the vehicle and studied it with our binoculars. The home owner came out because we made him curious. He was one of the few that kept his bird feeders full. The mysterious bird turned out to be an obese extra large blue jay. The 3 large flocks of cedar waxwings were exciting to see. One tree had so many waxwngs on a branch that the branch bent down with their weight. The red winged blackbird was exciting too because it took us a while to figure her out. We drove through wealthy neighborhoods and less wealthy neighborhoods. We saw two driveways that were so clear of snow we figured they had to be heated. Who has heated driveways? I saw one mansion who installed a covered bridge on their property. We ended up driving about 55 miles during our count. We had a great time though and I look forward to doing it again next year.
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