Fall Catchup and Project FeederWatch, S2!

Other than the trip to Detroit, it has been a quiet fall season of birding. My one other trip was to the cities to do some dog-sitting. On the way over, I made some short stops in Morris and Starbuck, MN. There were no crazy sightings, but the weather was nice, and I was more than happy with what I was able to see.

My main target for the cities was Dakota County, so on the first morning of my stay I headed down to Mud Lake Park and Thomson County Park. I was hoping to get out and hit some other places within walking distance of the house, but COVID had other plans for me.

Whew, okay. Up to date.

For the 2022-2023 season, Project FeederWatch rolled the starting date back to November 1st which comes in handy for me, and I spent a few hours Friday and Saturday watching the feeders.

The ever-reliable chickadees and house finches were out. Three species of woodpeckers (downy, hairy and northern flicker) came to cling to the suet feeder for a snack. A few goldfinches stopped by. Some early juncos hopped about the leafy yard. The peanuts were quickly swooped upon by the blue jays--in one trip, a single jay put three entire peanuts (shell and all) down its beak before flying away. A little red-breasted nuthatch was also present, zipping to and from the feeders, utterly unperturbed by my presence.

It was a great start to the season, and now I must hurriedly post the few pictures so that I can return to watching Smash Summit 14.

Detroit 2022, I - Birds!

Following my return from the Great North, I gave myself a month off of travel, confining myself to city limits for short, infrequent birdwatching walks. But this past week, a friend and I hopped on an early flight destined for Detroit, Michigan where we would spend the next four nights. Birding was not the primary focus of the trip, but I did get out a few times to see some birds and add some more color to my eBird states map.

We arrived in Detroit at 8am on Thursday and called our hotel to request an early check-in. The hotel was booked full, but they squeezed us in which was absolutely awesome seeing as we were operating on very little sleep when our plane touched down. After a few hours rest, we headed out to explore and wandered alongside Detroit River from Hart Plaza to the William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor. The sparrows were numerous: white-throated, white-crowned, chipping, juncos, etc. The ring-billed gulls were also out in number.

The next morning, I woke up early and caught a ride to the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus where I wandered through the Environmental Interpretive Center's wooded backyard. It was a neat space with plenty of little trails winding through the trees.

The temperature had dropped into the low thirties, and at first my chilly walk was worryingly quiet. I happened across plenty of squirrels and a doe or two but was seeing few birds for the first twenty or thirty minutes. However, as the sun rose behind the clouds, so did my luck.

This black-throated blue warbler was a first for me, and I got a great look at him as he hopped about the fallen foliage, peaking underneath leaves in search of a morning bite without minding me much as a I lay in the nearby grass.

Perhaps the coolest moment happened just before I encountered him. I had just paused on a trail when I heard something in the nearby brush and turned to my right where a buck stood staring straight at me from no more than ten feet away. The buck didn't budge. I slowly lifted my camera, and right as I put the viewfinder to my eye, the battery died, and before I could change it, the buck had moved on through the brush and out of sight.

The black-throated blue warbler would be the only lifer species of the trip, but I did catch sight of some other fun fall migrants as I walked around the EIC including ruby- and golden-crowned kinglets, yellow-rumped, Nashville, orange-crowned and palm warblers, ovenbirds and more. After spotting a brown creeper marching up the side of a nearby tree, I happily headed into the EIC building for a drink of water and also browsed the neat collection of wood-crafted birds.

I would sneak in another short stroll along the Detroit River the following morning, but my weekend was otherwise packed full. More on that in a future post.

Juneau VI: Too many pictures!

As much fun as I have going on these big trips and seeing all kinds of new species and familiar birds in new locations, I do not enjoy transferring, identifying, naming and picking through thousands and thousands of photos. There's a reason it has taken me weeks to post all the photos of my eleven-day trip (it was supposed to be ten days, but my original return flight was cancelled). The reason was not that I was too busy, but, anyways, let's get this over with!

The first of August was a big highlight of my trip, for my friend and I were booked on an all-day boat tour of the Stacy Arm Fjord. Considering I've only been on tiny fishing boats and pontoons on small Minnesota lakes for short durations, we stocked up on some preventative medicines for motion sickness. Thankfully, the water on the channel ended up extremely calm. I'll let the pictures do the talking, but I have to say that if you're willing to shell out nearly two hundred dollars for a boat tour, you may as well be outside of the cabin! Just about everybody else on the tour missed out on the pair of orca my friend and I got a great view of through my friend's binos (by that point I was done taking pictures and just wanted to relax).

White-winged scoter spotted! This was a bird I'm pretty sure I saw when I went to visit my friend on Kodiak Island back in 2019, but I deleted all my pictures from the first two days on accident and lost all my records.

The last picture here shows the second lifer species of the day--arctic terns seen amongst all the gulls which were flying about the iceberg.