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A Birding Spectacle in MN
- To: birdnet@utahbirds.org
- Subject: A Birding Spectacle in MN
- From: Carol Gwynn <cgwynn at earthlink dot net>
- Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 00:36:23 -0700
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- Reply-to: Carol Gwynn <cgwynn at earthlink dot net>
- Sender: owner-birdnet@utahbirds.org
This post is not about Utah birds, so feel free to delete now, if you
wish. If any of you have extra time or $$, there is a birding
spectacle going on in northern Minnesota. I was there for a short time
visiting family, and on Tuesday the 28th, we headed northwest of Duluth
to look for the owls. The Sax-Zim area is literally crawling with owls
- Great Grays and Northern Hawk Owls. We had limited time and a 3-hour
drive each way from the Twin Cities, and that left a short birding day,
since the sun sets at 4:30 p.m. In just a few hours of birding, we
watched 12 Great Gray Owls and 5 Northern Hawk Owls. And we could have
pushed the numbers much higher, if we hadn't spent so much time
watching the ones we saw. Only a couple of owls were far enough away
to require a scope; the others were along the roadsides, only a few
feet away. it was one of the most unbelievable things I have ever
seen. On the Sax-Zim CBC on Dec. 20, 70 Great Grays and 24 Northern
Hawk Owls were tallied, shattering the North American CBC count for
these two species.
Birders and photographers are flying in from all over the country to
see and photograph the owls. You can fly into Minneapolis/St. Paul on
Delta or Northwest, or into Duluth on Northwest, which cuts your drive
down to about an hour. If you decide that your New Year's resolution
is to see more Great Grays in a few hours than you will see the rest of
your life, feel free to e-mail me for directions. Betsy Beneke is also
there, and she has more time, so I expect she will see about triple the
number I saw. If you decide to go, it's wise to allow a window of a
few days, since the weather there can be positively polar. On days of
heavy snow, fewer owls are being seen. We lucked out, and had pretty
good weather, by Minnesota standards.
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