Photo Gallery
Chris Wood and Parker Backstrom
Minnesota in Winter is snowy and cold…
…well almost always…
…and we’ll need to be well bundled…
…but then even the Saw-whet Owls are well bundled.
We’ll drive snowy rural roads looking for…
…Ruffed and…
…the often uncommonly tame Spruce Grouse…
…but the stars most years are the owl: Northern Hawk…
…Snowy…
…Great Gray…
…Barred…
…and on occasion even Boreal.
There are mammal surprises too - no images of the Lynx…sorry - but we didn’t expected a Timber Wolf either.
We’ll get out of the car as often as weather and circumstance allow…
…listening for the sneezy calls of Boreal Chickadee…
…the hard lisps of Bohemian Waxwings…
…the dry chatter of White-winged Crossbills…
…and the soft taps of Black-blacked…
…or more rarely American Three-toed Woodpeckers.
We’ll walk down snowy driveways to favorite feeders…
…where we might encounter Evening Grosbeak or…
…a Hoary Redpoll among its commoner cousins…
…or we may encounter something surprising like this Varied Thrush (the Pine Grosbeak was pretty fine too…)
Lake Superior will be bleak and mostly devoid of birds but here and there…
…with the help of local friends, we might encounter an Iceland Gull…
…or something like a little gaggle of Harlequin Ducks.
Since the Minnesota in Winter birds usually give us such a good show…
…we always like to give something back before we leave.