Birds!!! Oh my goodness, we’ve had the most bird-wonder-filled winter this year!
Although I watch wildlife, including birds, for a living, I am still impressed by how much joy and perspective they can bring me. Things in the US are at an all-time strange for us humans. In these days of constant change and uncertainty, I find it increasingly enjoyable to look beyond the humans humaning. For reasons that I don’t quite understand, birds do this for me (*twitch-twitch*). I get excited when I see the first mountain bluebirds return in the spring. I laugh at the antics of magpies in the yard, and thank them for eating the mice I catch. I am stoked to see the great horned owls and osprey return to their nests near the end of the long winter that is only kind of becoming spring. These birds mark cycles. It feels familiar and reassuring. I’ve become one of those people who remarks about the passing flicker, mid-sentence. I pull the car over to watch flocks of rosy finches. I show American dippers to strangers.
Lately, enabled by my friends and fellow nerds, I’ve been traveling for birds.
Back in February I took a road trip from Gardiner, MT to the U.P. of Michigan with my good friend Leanne from Western Australia in search of owls. This was all her idea, but I jumped in, head first to see how much we could pack into our time and geography. We drove over 3,000 miles from Montana through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and even had lunch in Sault St. Marie, Canada! We endured temperatures below -25 degrees F and we had a BLAST! We managed to find 7 species, including 9 individual snowy owls (photos are below). We also met some incredible people and explored some stunning landscape all while trying not to freeze our butts off! Yes, I agree, Great Lakes cold is WET cold!
Our first stop was the delightful little town of Medora, ND right on the MT border. We enjoyed the relaxed hospitality of a small busy tourist town in its off season and headed into Teddy Roosevelt National Park first thing in the morning. It’s a beautiful ‘badlands’ area with bison, wild horses along a gorgeous stretch of river. We managed to find a great horned owl and a small group of sharp-tailed grouse. I believe these were my first ever sharpies.
We pretty much zipped across ND, taking advantage of good weather and highway speeds. We bounced through Park Rapids, MN where the tree density picked up.
Duluth was a great little city, right on the shore. It has nice walking paths and parks, fun shops and good used gear shops. We got to visit with my friend Sarah and her family. She showed us around town a bit and made me think I’d like to come back to canoe on the boundary waters and other beautiful spots up that way. Generally in Duluth, people are super nice and everything is within a 10 minute drive. Up the shore, north of town there are lots of beautiful old homes and lake side cabins. Based on recent records on ebird and iNaturalist, we went searching for a boreal owl that had been seen recently. We looked and looked, until finally some chickadees tipped us off that something was going on in a small woodlot. Sure enough, there was a boreal owl devouring a flying squirrel on a stump about 100 feet off the road. We would never have seen it if it weren’t for the chickadees. Sadly, we found a second boreal owl nearby, recently dead, probably from starvation.
One of our favorite stops was at Bayfield & Red Cliff WI, where we got to meet two incredible Lake Superior Chippewa men, Marvin DeFoe and Ron Nordin from Red Cliff. Mr DeFoe is an elder and told us about the cultural relationship between his people and wolves. You can hear his story too. Ron works as a biologist at Red Cliff, studying wolves among other things. He told us about his wolf monitoring and conflict reduction work. I was surprised by how many logistical differences there are between studying wolves in Yellowstone versus the dense forests of the northern Midwest. It makes sense, but I still had to see it to really take it in. The weather was atrocious when we were traveling from Duluth to Red Cliff. It was blowing snow, sand and anything not nailed down, so our visit to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore wasn’t quite as magical as I think it would be in the summer. I hope to check it out at another, less frigid and stormy time.
Onward from there, we met up with Bret in Eagle River, WI. on our way to Trout Lake, MI. We stayed at the cutest old lakeside inn B&B for three nights so that we could be close to ‘the snowy owl capital’ Rudyard, MI. We were fortunate to have many snow owl sightings of at least 8 different individuals. It’s a farming area, so it was flat as a pancake and probably full of rodents, kinda like the arctic. We made a lovely side trip to Sault St. Marie, Canada during their winter festival and we found an Amish farm stall with all manner of goodies on the way. I’m still working through the jar of apple butter that I got there. Yum! This was our easternmost point and we left wishing we’d had more time there. I would have liked more xc skiing and we found out that we’d missed a beautiful male snowy owl from a nice lady at the Rudyard grocery store. I’d go back, but might fly to Duluth or the twin cities next time!
On the way back, we stopped into Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to marvel at the epic icicles there. This seems like a great spot to visit in summer or autumn too! We attempted to downhill ski, which wasn’t amazing, but it was good and the views over the lake were….well, Superior!
Back in MN, we stayed a few nights outside Sax Zim Bog. This place is legendary among birders and it delighted us from dawn to dusk for the two days we were there. We saw several great gray owls, a saw-whet owl, pileated woodpeckers, crossbills, grosbeaks, grouse and just missed seeing a pine marten. The place is a piecemeal reserve in the midst of farm land. The visitor center is great and the docents just could not be better. I thought this place was a real treasure and I’d take the opportunity to go back anytime.
From here, we jetted west pretty quickly, stopping at Lost 40 scientific area, a remnant of old growth midwestern forest, Fargo for a last attempt at snowy owls (we saw snowshoe hares instead!), Bismarck for car repairs and Makoshika State Park in Glendive, MT to enjoy some more badland scenery in the frost. Glendive is quirky as all and well worth the stop. The state park is beautiful and on my list of areas to check out during the non-winter.
After getting home and guiding a great stint of winter Wolf & Wildlife Watching trips in Yellowstone; my boyfriend, his mom and I took a trip to Freezeout Lake and Lake Frances to see the snow goose migration at the end of March. We were apparently early for the massive influx of approx. 92,000 snow/ross geese last Thursday, but we still saw tens of thousands of birds. This was like nothing I’ve ever seen! It was magical, but also seemed like something that is supposed to be ‘normal’ up here in the flyway. I am so grateful for the persistence of birds and everyone who has worked to protect them and their habitat. Look what you did!
In early April, my boyfriend and I went to a small town in central eastern Idaho to see the Sage Grouse display. It was spectacular and absolutely worth getting up before dawn to see these stunning males strut their stuff: fanning their fancy-ass tail feathers and throwing their weird, wrinkly, yellow chest pouches out while making noises that could have worked well in dubstep. We went back for a second morning. We loved it! Can’t stop talking about how cool it was.
A few weeks later, I met up with three friends in Great Falls to go watch some sharp-tailed grouse display. They are incredible people, so I was 50% stoked to see them and 50% stoked to see the grouse. Great Falls is a bit of a weird place, but the tiny Lake Benton National Wildlife Refuge had a proliferation of birds and the grouse put on the most incredible show. I cannot believe how lucky we are that Ken booked the blind, and then invited us to join! It was totally worth being up before 4 am for.
Please get in touch! We’d love to hear how your winter went, what adventures you are getting up to this spring and how you’re doing.
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