Southside Pride

You know it’s another slow month when my first item is something I did not even see – an Edgar sighting! Edgar, the partial albino female Mallard duck, was seen (with other ducks) in water that stays open on the Hiawatha golf course. A Powderhorn good neighbor made the observation and reported it to me in early January.

Other Powderhorn neighbors reported the following items of interest. One has some pictures of a hawk in the park. I have not had a chance to see the pictures yet. Another thought she saw bats on one of the evenings with the 50+ degree daytime highs early in the month, and she wonders if that is possible. I don’ know if bats are true hibernators, like bears, or if they would come out on warm days like raccoons and chipmunks sometimes do. I will try to find an answer to this by next month. If the bats did come out, they would not find many insects to eat but maybe they make what are called “cleansing flights” like bees do on mild winter days.

A Powderhorn business owner reported to me that he has lots of Mo
urning Doves in his yard in Bloomington after I mentioned the total absence of doves in the backyard last month.

Another neighbor mentioned a theory he heard on public radio — that the lack of significant snow cover allows birds to stay in the country and not seek the food and shelter available in the urban areas. This seems like a reasonable theory. Whatever the cause is, there are way fewer birds in the park and yard than in the past few winters.

There have been some birds in the yard. House Finches and Juncos made a few appearances in January after none in December. The usual suspects continue with the Cardinals sometimes doing their “What cheer” spring song.

The park continues to be very slow for birding. On my final walk for the month, aside from a small group of Crows, I saw only one other bird, a Hairy Woodpecker, and that was not easy. I heard it several times and didn’t give up until I saw it.

I was in Eagan, house-sitting for a week last month, and went to my usual favorite spot in the area, Patrick Eagan Park. I did not see one bird in the entire park, but I did hear Chickadees in two areas. The yard there was also much less productive (in terms of birds) than usual, but a flock of Goldfinches showed up on my last day there.

Two years ago, when I did not have many birds to write about for February, I wrote about the Madison-Marietta-Salt Lake (in far western Minnesota) spring bird trip, which is very low-key, interesting and productive, and takes place in late April. This year I hope I can interest some readers in the Great River Birding Festival that takes place May 9, 10,and 11. The headquarters of the festival are in Lake City but the birding occurs in various locations and habitats on both the Minnesota and Wisconsin sides of the Lake Pepin area of the Mississippi River. In addition to the usual birding on foot or in a vehicle, this event includes birding by boat and by rail. As a lover of birds, boats and trains, I was an easy mark for the festival, first held last year. The weather, in case you don’t remember, was very cold, damp and windy with a little snow thrown in, the second weekend in May, but the birding was great. The birding by boat was on houseboats, normally rented out when summer finally arrives, but which would probably go unused if not for crazy birders willing to go out on the river in wind-driven rain. The houseboats left from Wabasha and towed small boats for further exploring of small islands and channels.

The birding by rail was on an abandoned rail line that more or less follows the Chippewa River from the tiny town of Savoy, Wisconsin, into the Mississippi River backwaters. (The line originally went from Eau Claire to Wabasha.) The abandoned line is maintained by a group of old railroad buffs and the ‘train” was not a full size train but a group of “work gang cars” pulled by a “motor car,” what some of us would call handcars. There were about 90 people on the string of open cars that traveled from walking to running speed and stopped whenever there was anything to see, which was often. The area would be almost impossible to get to in any way except on the railroad grade, and the birding was fantastic, with many warblers and songbirds, water birds and shorebirds, everything from a group of Scarlet Tanagers to an active and occupied Bald Eagle nest.

The rest of the birding was more conventional but the bird numbers were outstanding and they threw in other benefits like “birders specials” at various local businesses and restaurants, bird identification programs by the DNR and other professionals, and a reception with wine and cheese supplied by local wine and cheese makers with a talk by Al Batt, a southern Minnesotan, good guy and last year’s national “Birder of the Year.”

I don’t know if anyone else cared about the above, but writing about it and reliving it helped me make it through another dreary winter night.

Comments and observations are always welcome. Send them to me, in care of the Southside Pride. Thank you.