Even before Clare and I considered embarking on a Big Year, we were following others who were doing their own Big Years, reading about their birding experiences, and all kinds of inspirational things.. One of the first blogs we discovered was that of Tom Smith’s, Palm Beach County… Naturally. We had been looking forward to getting over to Tom’s neck of the woods, and even more so when he offered to take us around some of his favorite spots!

We started off meeting at the south end of Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge as the sun was just peeking over horizon and illuminating what seemed like countless Ibis, Herons and Egrets, flying just above the sawgrass of the Everglades, to their feeding sites for the day. We walked around Loxahatchee for a bit adding several species for the day, but probably the most amazing part was seeing a trio of Bobcats, a mother and two well-grown kittens,  just moments after Tom had told us where he usually spots them!

White Ibis (taken at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary). This picture doesn't really show how incredibly blue it's eyes were.

We moved on to Wellington Environmental Preserve where we were promised a Snail Kite, and it didn’t take long before we had a pair of them flying overhead! All the while, we continued picking up new birds for the year, some lifers, and we were already putting together a nice day list.

I feel it necessary to mention here that before we started this, Clare and I were never terribly bothered about lists. I mean, we kept track of everything, but we weren’t the ‘tick and go’ variety of birder (or birder-in-training). Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just funny to think about it that way sometimes when we get caught up in the chase and almost forget to enjoy the moment…. But not this day, we took it slow, and had a pretty big day anyway!

After a break for lunch at Pollo Tropical (thanks again for taking us there Tom – we’re already looking forward to hitting another one in Jacksonville!), we stopped by Peaceful Waters Sanctuary in Wellington where we could possibly fill another gap… Once again, we were not disappointed. Before too long we had a very nice view of a pair of Wood Ducks before they disappeared into the vegetation AND added Stilt Sandpiper before we carried on to Green Cay Wetlands.

Geek Alert: The way this Anhinga was raising and lowering his head from the water made me think of the creature in the trash compactor in 'Star Wars'.

For more incredible pictures from our day, check out Tom’s post, here!

Yes, the same Green Cay Wetlands that we were at the day before! What were we missing, you might ask… Well, it appears that we were missing someone who knows the place like his own back yard! Tom thought maybe he could help us to see American Bittern, Least Bittern, and Sora before the sun set on our amazing day…. What he didn’t promise was multiples of each, but that’s what we got!! On the way out of Green Cay, we paused by the feeders out front where an Ovenbird had been seen occasionally. It was nice enough to come out and take a bow as the curtain call to a fantastic day, where we managed to see at least 81 species! (Clare and I might even have missed a few as we were counting them up that evening… We’ve learned from now on, when we do that kind of whirlwind day in an unfamiliar place, we have to keep a running tab).

We can’t thank Tom enough for the VIP tour of his stomping ground in Palm Beach County. It was one of our most enjoyable day’s of birding, not to mention the wonderful conversation and all the things we learned! Plus we got a few tips for our trip, heading north, one of which we used the following morning, but that’s a story for another day…

We arrived in Florida a couple of days ago, after a few days of long drives, although even on our driving days we still managed to get in few hours of birding. On this trip we’re birding mainly in south and central Florida, to pick up what we can whilst the temperature’s pleasant and the mozzies aren’t too intense. We’ll then return in early summer for noddies, boobies, Black-whiskered Vireo, among others.
We were so excited about birding Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary that we hardly needed the alarm to wake us up yesterday morning. So despite the switch to daylight savings time and the fact that we had an hour of driving to reach our destination, we still got there ten minutes before it opened, and half an hour before it got light!

 
I’d been to Corkscrew Swamp twelve years ago and loved the place, so it was wonderful to return and find it even better than I remembered.  We set out on the boardwalk just as it was getting light, and listened as the last few calls of the Chuck-wills-widows and Barred Owls were interspersed with the dawn singing of Carolina Wrens and Cardinals, and the squawks of Gray Catbirds.

 
We walked slowly along the boardwalk, initially hearing a lot more than we could see. When we were about halfway round, we started to see more birds, including a gorgeous bright yellow warbler with blue-gray wings and a black eye-line. I didn’t recognize it at first, as it wasn’t a species I was expecting. I was glad when shortly afterwards one of the volunteers told me a Blue-winged Warbler had been around all winter, confirming my identification of the bird. We also saw a female Summer Tanager, another over-wintering bird.

'There isn't a screen available to show this spider actual size' ~Eric

Next we got to the Lettuce Lakes area, where we quickly added a couple of species to our year list that we somehow hadn’t come across already: Green Heron and Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. We also had a Banded Water Snake and a Fishing Spider with a huge egg sac pointed out to us by reserve volunteers.  We spent a long time in that area, chatting with the volunteers and watching the herons, egrets and anhingas. One Anhinga had caught a large catfish, and was having trouble swallowing it. After many attempts, he dropped it in the water, put his head under to get it, came back up with a stick, played with that for a few seconds, dropped it, and gave up entirely!

"Perhaps I should have ordered the catfish fillets instead"

Our five hours at Corkscrew Swamp was nicely rounded off with two Barred Owls right next to the boardwalk, and a few gorgeous Painted Buntings at the feeders by the visitor center.

This was taken in the middle of a very impressive 'hoo hoo ho-ho!'

In the afternoon we went to Bunche Beach for shorebirding. We were so into our quest that we didn’t appreciate quite how dark the sky was getting until ten seconds before we were completely soaked! It was worth it for the Piping Plovers, although next trip a space will be found in the car for a spare pair of sneakers.

Today we spent the morning at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. We didn’t find a Mangrove Cuckoo, but we enjoyed seeing up-close waders and shorebirds, and we added a few species to our year list, although nothing we won’t see again. Tomorrow we’re heading to Everglades National Park, another place I’ve been looking forward to returning to, and showing to Eric.

In the few days since our last post, we’ve finished up our birding in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (at least for now), and done a lot of driving towards Florida. We made another couple of visits to Estero Llano Grande State Park in search of the Rose-throated Becard, which we didn’t find, although the Tropical Area there was teeming with birds, including Clay-colored Thrush, Summer Tanager and Audubon’s Oriole. We also met some very nice people there, including Chris from Michigan, who gave us several tips on where to go in the Pacific NW, and the Upper Peninsula. Hope to see you at Magee Marsh, Chris! So, unfortunately, the Becard will have to wait til later in the year, when I know we’ll be returning to the lower Rio Grande Valley.

(on a side note, the Harris’ Hawk that I only got a 10 second look at while we were speeding to Salineno to see the Brown Jay, we’ve seen all over the place since, including at least six of them at once hanging out at the lake by the nature center at Estero Llano Grande)

Before leaving the LRGV, we also visited Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, where we picked up a number of shore birds, and looked in vain for a Hook-billed Kite that had been seen there. Santa Ana is a wonderful place, and we spent several hours walking the extensive trails there.

Our first stop on leaving the Valley was at San Miguelito Ranch, north of Raymondville, for Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. The ranch does guided tours in March and April, when the owls are most reliably found. Our guide met us at the gate at 9am and took us in his 4×4 up to the ranch house. We’d spent less than five minutes looking for the owl in the trees in the yard before he found it. Finally a target bird that didn’t require repeat visits! Although Clare has seen plenty of Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls in Central and South America, she was still excited to see this one, and fortunately my camera worked for long enough for him to get some great shots of my first ever Pygmy-Owl.

He looks pretty intense for being about 4 inches tall!

Our guide had told us that there’s often a Barn Owl roosting in a barn in the yard, but it wasn’t there that morning. So after looking at a few ducks and shorebirds on the pond behind the yard, we got on the road and started heading up the Texas coast.

We spent the night camping at Goose Island State Park, arriving early enough to visit the nearby Big Tree area for Whooping Cranes (we saw four fly past just before we got there), and to also visit Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The high wind wasn’t conducive to great birding, but we still picked up Caspian Tern for our year list. Goose Island State Park has regular bird talks and bird walks, so we attended the talk in the evening, given by resident ornithologist Dennis Haessly. The talk was about woodland birds and their identification, and it covered the species likely to be seen on the following morning’s bird walk. Even though most of these are species we’re already familiar with, we both still learned plenty. Dennis also told us where we should be able to find Seaside Sparrows and Nelson’s Sparrows in the park.

Next morning we were up early to look for sparrows. We’d planned on taking our tent down later, but a few flashes of lightning had us hurrying to decamp before the skies opened, although in the end there were only a few drops of rain. The strong wind and dark sky didn’t fill us with confidence that we’d see any sparrows. However, after being distracted from our main quest by a nice selection of shorebirds and waders, we got back to looking at the marsh, and saw several birds as they came up onto grass stems and then dropped back down out of sight. With more light we’d have had some good scope views, but as it was it took us a while to see any of them well enough to be 100% sure we had Seaside Sparrows. We probably also saw a Nelson’s Sparrow there, but the view was too brief and the light too poor for us to be certain.

We’d intended to go on the bird walk at 8am, but with the weather worsening and a very long drive ahead, we decided to hit the road instead.

We broke our long drive with a visit to an upmarket suburb of Houston, where Monk Parakeets have been seen. Clare would like to find all the countable exotics with zero effort, because she wants to see them in their natural surroundings, rather than looking at escaped cage birds (especially as she hates that people buy and sell birds to keep them in cages). Finding the Monk Parakeets did take a bit of effort – a small detour to reach the area, and then a bit of driving around with the windows down, looking and listening. Just as we were about to give up and continue our drive, Clare heard them, and soon we were watching at least twenty. The camera was playing up again, so I missed getting a shot of two of them grooming each other, but I did get a few record shots, and it was great to see these gorgeous birds seemingly thriving in this suburban environment.

"Hey, this doesn't look like Argentina!!"

We spent the rest of the day driving, stopping around 6pm at a motel in Hammond, to the west of New Orleans, and well positioned for some birding in the morning.

And the quest continues..

We couldn’t decide who should post today, short of a wrestling match, and we’re both tired.. So we’re both writing this one.

Eric: While we were at Salineno, Cheryl recommended a Bed & Breakfast in Alamo, called the Alamo Inn, which caters to birders. We took her advice and booked the night there even before we met the incredibly kind and knowledgeable owner, Keith Hackland, and saw how lovely the hotel was. If they hadn’t been filled that weekend, he may have never been rid of us! We returned to Frontera Audubon the following morning to see if the Golden-crowned Warbler would be a little more social. The good news, he decided to grace us with his presence, the bad news, he didn’t want to stick around for pictures or autographs.. I can respect that, so we moved on, although Frontera Audubon is a fantastic place and I know we’ll be going back someday.

Clare: After a few hours at Frontera, we went to nearby Estero Llano Grande State Park. This is a beautiful place, with a lake by the visitor center that had a very nice variety of waterfowl. We quickly added Least Grebe and Cinnamon Teal to our year list, before heading to the tropical zone to seek out the Rose-throated Becard that has been seen there. There were plenty of other birders also looking for the Becard, but no-one saw it while we were there. A roosting Pauraque was some consolation, and we’ll be back for another try at the Becard.

If it weren't for having so many other birders around looking for the Becard, there's no way we would have spotted this Pauraque ourselves

Meanwhile we still needed the Brown Jay, which was doing a great job of eluding us. It had turned up at Del Rio RV Park in Chapeno, close to Salineno, the day that we’d been waiting in vain for it at Salineno. By the time we saw the report about that on the Texas Rare Bird Alert, we were already in Weslaco, so we decided to go for the rarities in that area and see what the Brown Jay did before giving it another try. Anyway, since it seemed to have settled in to regular visits at Chapeno, we decided to head up there after birding at Estero Llano. We arrived at the RV park around 4pm, to be told by the owner that it had been in around half an hour earlier. She got us chairs to sit on, and said we were welcome to stay as long as we liked, to try and see it. So we stayed until almost sundown, watching the feeders for the Jay, and checking the river every so often for other birds.  We camped again at Falcon State Park, and then returned to Chapeno at dawn the next morning. We started off watching the river, adding Ringed Kingfisher to our list, but not seeing a hoped-for Red-billed Pigeon or Muscovy Duck. We then concentrated our efforts on the feeders, but by 11am the Jay hadn’t shown.

Cactus Wren, "Ahem, I think you forgot to mention something, Clare.."

I’d been refreshing the Texas RBA page on my iPhone every half an hour or so, in case of any news, and just as we were discussing how much longer to give the Jay, an update appeared – he was back at Salineno! We jumped into the car and raced over there. A lifer Harris’s Hawk en route might have delayed us, but Eric had his eye firmly on the prize. He stopped the car for ten seconds to get enough of a look for it to count, and then we were off.

Eric: Clare called it a ‘Kenny Bostick moment’

Also it’s worth mentioning that I was having critical camera issues all morning, probably from the fact that it dipped below freezing the night before, so I was a bit frazzled anyway.. to say the least.

Clare: The Brown Jay had appeared four times that morning, so we got sat down and waited. We were determined, but fully expecting to sit there for the rest of the day and at least part of the next morning. We got chatting to Cheryl and a couple of the other birders there, in between admiring the gorgeous Orioles and watching the numerous other birds coming in to feed. Then Eric and I simultaneously saw a large brown bird appear in the bushes opposite us, and we’d barely had time to point out where he was before he hopped onto a feeder and took a few large bill-fulls of peanut butter. He posed just long enough for a photo, before disappearing as fast as he’d arrived. After high fives and, for me, another look at the Screech-Owl at the back, we took Cheryl’s advice and went to look for Cassin’s Sparrows in Falcon Dam State Park. We heard them singing before we even got to the park, and Eric was soon photographing one that obligingly sat and sang near the top of a fence. After that we drove south again in excellent spirits.

I had one shot before the camera locked up on me. Thankfully he was very photogenic!

Eric: I just want to send our infinite gratitude to Cheryl for her kindness, hospitality, and the tip on the Cassin’s Sparrow. It took us all of 19 minutes after we left Salineno until we found one!

I wish I could put the Cassin's Sparrow's song in here. It's decidedly more sweet than the picture might suggest.

Clare: We still had some birding time left so we spent a couple of hours walking around Bentsen State Park. It was rather quiet, but thanks to Eric’s excellent spotting, we finished the day’s birding with a Northern Beardless Tyrannulet.

Eric: I was lucky to see it fly in and just had enough time to get Clare on it, because we didn’t see another one all afternoon.

Clare: Our birding fortunes are definitely looking up, and in targeting the rarities first, we’ve also added a lot of great birds to our year list. Now I’m looking at what else we still need in this area before we move on up the Texas coast. This morning we’re heading to Estero Llano Grande early, to try again for the Becard, and to spend a bit longer there to see what else we can find.

Preface: When camping, internet is a bit harder to come by. Sorry it’s been ages since our last post. I think we’ve got a plan now…

It’s a long, long road out of Indy.. It only took us a day to get to the Texas border, but another couple days, birding our way down, to reach our first place to set camp. Along the way we motel hopped and tried to pick up a couple of the more difficult species (namely Smith’s Longspur and Mountain Plover), whilst getting a few sparrows, a couple warblers, Loggerhead Shrike, Wilson’s Snipe, and a few more that we’ll probably be tripping over shortly.

Loggerhead Shrike - This shot is actually some of Clare's handywork. So she's not allowed to use the camera anymore, because she's way better with it than I am!!

After striking out on several locations for both our target species in Arkansas, we tried roadside scoping a sod farm near Moore, TX on the second morning and found 3 Mountain Plovers among a group of Meadowlarks. Finally a burst of excitement in what had been some discouraging birding so far..

Next stop, our first Rio Grande valley destination, San Ygnacio, at a small spot where White-collared Seedeater is reported regularly. After sitting in the car at the head of a gated trail for several minutes trying to figure out if we were in the right place or not, we left the car on a patch of dirt off to the side of the road and went to see what we could see. We made our way down to the river and quickly found Neotropic Cormorant and a Ladder-backed Woodpecker on the US side of the Rio Grande. Not long after we found our first (of many) Chachalacas, Black-crested Titmice, Green Jays, Olive Sparrows, Orange-crowned Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and Common and Great-tailed Grackles.. Whew!

Yes, I'm cheating on the Titmice back home with their southern cousins... don't tell!

However, the main attraction here, the star of the show, the White-collared Seedeater, only made a very brief appearance. So brief, in fact, that only one of us saw it and the other couldn’t get the bins on it before it made tracks.. This is something that’s already happened a couple times this year, but never with something so elusive. I’ve been ahead a couple times, Clare’s taken the lead some, but we’ve never counted it until we’ve both seen it… So after giving up on finding that one again, we moved on to Zapata, where we’d heard that they’re  easier to find. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for us. We didn’t see them there, and we hit both locations again a couple days later, but they weren’t cooperating..

On Wednesday morning, Cheryl Longton stepped outside to fill the feeders in Salineno, Texas. Something she’s been doing during the winter months for 5 years now. This was one of those exciting years, when there was a rather irregular regular. A Brown Jay, and an eager one this morning, because he was already pecking at an orange at 7:45am that had been set out the day before, then leaving just a few moments later when a hawk showed up (kind of inevitable in this area). At 8am, Clare and I arrived at the Salineno Birding Area. I didn’t have any idea what to expect, but what I didn’t think was going to happen is that I would barely have the capacity to see all the wondrous birds that came to the feeders there… Clare was instantly pointing birds out to me that were lifers, because I didn’t even know which way to look!! Altamira, Audubon, and Hooded Orioles. White-tipped, Common Ground, and Inca Doves, Northern Bobwhites, Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, Pyrrhuloxia, Spotted Towhee, and as an added bonus,Cheryl showed us a Northern Screech Owl around the back.. It was an amazing day. We spent 9 hours just sat there, talking with Cheryl and other birders, watching the feeders, hearing the occasional ‘Squawk!’ and watching the immediate evacuation as a hawk flew through, and the eventual return of all the various birds as they realized it was safe. Alas, the Brown Jay did not return that day.. and when we checked in on Thursday, he hadn’t been seen there again.

Between the Green Jays, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Kiskadees, you could barely hear anything else, until they all flushed at once for a full 28 seconds of silence.

Northern Bobwhites are so cute, and have all the moves for attracting the ladies. Cheryl told us she'd seen one recently with three females in tow..

I was like a kid in a candy store, shooting the birds here. I think I took over 800 shots in the first couple hours..

Friday we spent the morning at Allen Williams‘ lovely garden in Pharr, watching for a Crimson-collared Grosbeak that had been stopping by regularly in the mornings. We spent 3 hours there before deciding to try again another day.. We had more of the same luck at Frontera Audubon that afternoon while looking for the Golden-crowned warbler. We’re picking up a good number of birds along the way, and we know our luck must change sometime soon, but it’s been a frustrating trip so far where the rarities are concerned, although we’re determined to find them!  Frontera Audubon is a wonderful place – 15 acres of gorgeous habitat in Weslaco, and we’re heading back there in just a few minutes for another try at the warbler, and for better looks at the female Crimson-collared Grosbeak, that put in a surprise appearance late in the afternoon there.

The Chachalaca has never had the burden of being described as quiet or graceful, but I couldn't stop taking pics of them anyways!

We forgot to mention the Buff-bellied Hummingbird we saw at Frontera Audubon. It was very cooperative and posed beautifully for photos.

Clare and I took some time off from doing all the necessary admin while we’re at home, to take a brief road trip with our friend Rob to Lafayette today, and meet a kind gentleman who gave us a tour of his amazing property so we could make the acquaintance of a few of the Owls residing therein. Now when I say ‘amazing’, I mean it! As soon as we arrived he had us hop on the back of his Gator (look it up), and we began winding our way through more habitats than I could have imagined he had hiding there. He was incredibly knowledgeable, telling us all about the various plants, trees, birds, mammals, amphibians, you-name-it, that called his land ‘home’, and bunches of stories about them… it was really a great time on a cold and rainy February day.

At one point Clare and I got to talking about how much we’d love to know all of this stuff. How we’d like to point out mosses and ferns along the way, recite their Latin names, and explain why it’s so special that they’re there. Don’t get me wrong, Clare is brilliant, and I have my moments, but we realize that learning more parts of the ecology of the areas we’ll be exploring this year could benefit us greatly. SOOOOOOO, that goes on the ‘to-do’ list.. Maybe we can split that job. Clare can take the trees and shrubs, and I’ll take the reeds and grass. (I’ll leave the salamanders to her, we saw a couple today and she thought they were cute)

So on route to see the Saw-whet Owl, we passed three Barred Owls, one of which was being very camera friendly…

'You didn't come to see me?! Move along..'

We stopped briefly at another spot where a Saw-whet was snoozing away, but buried deep within the branches it was roosting in. We got a peek, but was told there was another not far away. After we went a little further along the twisting trail, we climbed out of the Gator and walked a short way to the Owl of the hour..

Now this guy was a lifer for both Clare and I, and just as adorable as every picture I’d seen. I love watching the way Clare can stare forever at them, whether they’re lifers or birds she’s seen a hundred times before.. She truly has a love for this, and I think it’s catchy. In the subtitle of this blog I refer to myself as a ‘birder-in-training’ but when I watch Clare, I feel more like a person inspired to bird the way she does… even when I make beginner mistakes (I’ll get to that later). So we got face-to-face with this owl. He wasn’t bothered by us, or by the cameras, so we captured the moment…

'Saw-whet are you looking at??' Sorry I can't resist these puns. I'm done now.

After we hung out with the owl for a while, the property owner took us exploring a little more as we all talked. We saw an accipiter that sped through a bit too quickly for any of us to get much on him, and Clare saw a lone Common Redpoll, adding that to her Indiana list, followed by my IDing several Redpolls that turned out to be pale Tree Sparrows that I was spotting from a distance.. I DID mention that I’m a ‘birder-in-training’..

Our first priority on Monday morning was to find Sharp-tailed Grouse, which we still needed. We arrived at dawn at a site where some of the groups had seen them in good numbers the previous day, but there were none there for us. We drove around that area, and also checked out some other fields where they’d be seen recently, before returning to the first area again, but all to no avail. It was starting to feel like the Spruce Grouse search all over again, and time was getting on, so we decided to go to the Blue Spruce Road feeders to see if we’d have more luck with Evening Grosbeak.

I got my first field guide some 14 years ago, when huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico converted me in an instant from hiker to birder. So although I was living in the UK at the time, my first field guide was National Geographic’s Birds of North America, and I’ve had a particular love of North American birds ever since. Anyway, the real relevance here is that, of all the awesome birds in there, the one I most wanted to see when I first looked through the field guide was the big striking finch with the cool name, Evening Grosbeak. This trip was finally my chance, and I was desperate to see one.

We’d been to the Blue Spruce Road feeders the previous evening, and seen only a few Black-capped Chickadees and a Red-breasted Nuthatch. This morning it was very different, with at least a hundred Common Redpolls, and a few Pine Siskins and Pine Grosbeaks, in addition to Chickadees and Nuthatches. It only took us a minute or so to spot an Evening Grosbeak in the top of a tree, quickly followed by several more, which then came down to the feeders to give us even better views.  They were gorgeous, way better in real life than in any field guide!  There were three males in full awesome breeding plumage, as well as a few females, which were less showy, but still beautiful.

Now I need a new 'Most Wanted' bird

We were already having a wonderful day, but it was about to get even better.  We headed to a road just north of Meadowlands where some Sharp-tailed Grouse had been seen very recently according to eBird, and just before we got there I spotted six of them in a field. Success!

We thought these would be a lot harder to spot from the road than this

Next we needed Hoary Redpoll. We’d seen a Redpoll at a feeder the previous day that we thought might have been a Hoary, until we looked at our photographs in the evening and realized it was just a pale Common.  None of the Redpolls we’d seen at the Blue Spruce Road feeders looked like Hoarys, nor did any of the large number we saw elsewhere, so we decided to head to Duluth to try some feeders where both Varied Thrush and Hoary Redpoll had been seen.

When we got there, Seth Spencer, one of the guides from the festival, was already there, and another group of birders was just leaving. Then Erik Bruhnke, our guide from Saturday’s field trip, arrived with some birders he was guiding. Erik is an excellent birder who really knows Redpolls (and Gulls – more of that later). It didn’t take very long before two Hoary Redpolls arrived. They really do look different, with their incredibly tiny bills, whiter plumage, and the very delicate pink wash on the breast of the males. But even so, they’re far from obvious and it still takes careful looking to find them.

Another treat whilst we were there was the sight of two Ruffed Grouse, including a striking male, running across a gap at the back of the yard. The Varied Thrush was a no show, so that will have to wait until we go out west later in the year.

After seeing this guy, we know for sure we didn't see any earlier

We were going to go and look for Snowy Owl next, but we were making great time, having already seen our other three target birds for the day, so we decided instead to follow Erik to Canal Park to see some gulls.  That was a good decision, since we got awesome views, and photos, of Thayer’s, Glaucous, Great-black Backed, and Herring Gulls, and Erik gave us some new tips on gull identification, adding to what we’d learned at the gull workshop in January.

The sweet sound of the Glaucous Gull's melodious call, 'FEED ME!!!'

After that we went to look for Snowy Owls. Seth had given us two locations near Superior Airport where they’d been seen over the last few days, and we also tried around the port.  Despite a lot of slow driving and careful searching, we came up empty.  At that point we should have taken a break (or more like gone and looked at the Hawk-Owl again or done some more gull watching!) and gone back later in the afternoon when the Owls were more likely to be active, but we were keen to get a few hundred miles closer to home so that we could finish the journey the next day, especially since snow was forecast. Also, I figured that we had a good chance of finding a Snowy Owl around Madison or Milwaukee the next day, since there were plenty of recent sightings.  Anyway, we started the drive south around 3pm. We’d swapped phone numbers with one of the other birders we’d met at the Hoary Redpoll feeders, and I called to let her know that we’d not been successful. A couple of hours later, when we were already a long way south, she texted to let me know they were watching the owl near the airport.  This is definitely a lesson for the future, as we spent hours on the way back the next day trying without success to find a Snowy, and of course the snow wasn’t nearly as bad as forecast.

So overall we had a fantastic trip to Minnesota.  Big thanks to Erik Bruhnke, Chris West, Seth Spencer, Alex Stark, Seth Cutright and Lars Benson for all the info they gave us on where to find our key target birds, and also thanks to Tom Malone for driving us on the first day’s trip.  Also thanks to all the organizers of the Sax-Zim Bog Bird Festival – we had a wonderful time, met a lot of great people, and saw a lot of awesome northern birds.