Birds In The Bog

Prowling the bog for a Great Gray Owl.

Those are clumps of peanut butter stuck to that horizontal branch.  And a gray jay is just leaving the branch flying away to the upper left of the black bird feeder.

A lifer for me - a northern hawk owl on top of that tamarack is staring down at me with disapproving yellow eyes.  It looks much closer in the spotting scope.

Some female pine grossbeaks at this bird feeder.

This morning I was up at 5 a.m. so I could catch my bus bird tour of the Sax Zim Bog.  Buses were loading at 6:30 and the location was an hour away from my hotel.  I work all my warmest clothes and put warming packets in my socks on top of my toes.  I had the greatest day today.  Nine hours of watching birds in cold weather on a Floodwood Schools bus with complete strangers with whom I have a lot in common; it was great.  Some people who live near the bog put up bird feeders for visitors.  This is nice for the community because it lures us bird watchers to the area and keeps people from getting upset when they find a group of 25 people staring at their house with binoculars.  At our first stop we saw black capped chickadees, blue jays, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, and ravens.  I got a good look at a white breasted nuthatch and red breasted nuthatch at the same feeder and in the same view of my binoculars.  That is the first time I've seen the red and white varieties next to each other.  The bus drove on and at the next stop we saw pine grossbeaks, goldfinches, and many of the birds we had already seen.  Some people saw some snow buntings but I didn't get a good look at them.  We walked down Admiral Road looking for the great gray owl.  We never did see the great gray owl.  I did see some terribly large animal tracks in the snow.  What in the world could make these giant tracks?  I would think they were as large as moose feet but they didn't sink into the deep snow like I would think a moose foot would.  I asked around and learned that tracks I saw were made by a snowshoe hare.  Up the road further we saw some actual moose tracks.  A birder leading another group had seen a moose on this road on Friday. I wish I had seen that moose but the tracks are the next best thing.  The next bird feeder had a group of 10 pine siskins, gray jays and evening grossbeaks.  We stopped in the town at McDavitt to use the heated bathrooms at the fire station.  Inside were two fire engines, a small fire truck, coffee, cookies, and a very nice bathroom that had scented hand lotion on top of the sink.  Such luxury was much appreciated.  Back on the bus we found a snowy owl on top of a black spruce.  We admired it for such a long time our toes got cold.  We stopped for lunch.  We ate on the bus.  Our bag lunches had our names on them.  I was hungry.  Inside my bag was a sandwich on whole wheat.  I had asked for a vegetarian sandwich.  In my mind I pictured bean sprouts, tomato slices, and onions.  Inside I found white cheese on wheat bread and no vegetables at all.  I also had a singles serving of mayo, a chocolate granola bar, and chips.  Ironically the chips that came with my vegie sandwich that had no vegetables were made with cheddar and bacon.  This was a calorie dense lunch!  I ate the parts I wanted.  Our next search was for a black billed magpie.  Generally these magpies are found in the western states but a few come as far east as the Sax Zim bog.  Unfortunately we didn't see any.  We looked for the black backed woodpecker.  We could hear it singing and drumming but we couldn't get a look at it. As we drove down St. Louis county road 7 the woman in front of me spotted the snow buntings.  I looked at them through a spotting scope in a large open field.  The flock flew up and crossed the road right in front of us as the snow began to fall heavily.  The snow buntings flew like big snow flakes with black wing tips.  They jumped and danced on both sides of the railroad tracks while we watched with snow piling up on our heads and shoulders.  Our next destination was Owl Road where we saw the Northern Hawk Owl.  After that treat we went to the bog visitor center to warm up and look at birds out of the windows.  We had more pine grossbeaks, chickadees, blue jays and a fat red squirrel sitting inside the glass bird feeder.  For the third time we went back to the feeder on Admiral Road.  The boreal chickadee had skunked us twice so far.  It was cold and snowing heavily and after waiting 15 minutes, the sneaky little boreal chickadee flew in, grabbed a bite of peanut butter and took off before we could focus our binoculars on it.  No matter, it had been seen and that was all that counted.  It was almost 3 o'clock.  We had been on the bus for 8.5 hours and heading back to the community center when we spotted our third snowy owl.  Of course we wanted to get out and look at that too.  This snowy was much darker than the others which mean she was a first year female.  As the train came by she flew up and flew over a barn to a different tree set farther back from the tracks.  Cold, dehydrated, exhausted we returned to the center.  There was another speaker tonight from the Eagle Center to talk about tracking golden eagles but I chose to skip that and the dinner.  The snow was coming down heavy and I wanted to get back to town and into a warm room where I could defrost my tootsies.  I had a great day birding in the bog. But I got to say the bog is poorly planned.  Two railroad tracks run through it north and south and they're about 1/8 of a mile apart.  That makes no sense to me.  Nice tar roads cut across the bog right next to each other and then we go 5 miles with no roads at all.  Even though the human infrastructure makes no sense, the Sax Zim bog is a beautiful place.