Andy's Green Big Year

The weekend rolled around at last, which I have been very much looking forward to - the weather forecast looked much more amenable to a nice bike ride - highs in mid-30s, which sure beats -21, which was our low earlier in the week. Unfortunately, once the weekend did get here, it wasn't quite as warm as promised, and it's been quite breezy. The plan was to ride over to nearby Cleary Lake Park to look for owls and a recently reported American Goshawk (!) that my friend Caleb found earlier this week. We'd meet there and try to find the bird again, along with owls, hopefully.  Well, four degrees at 9am this morning plus a little breeze did not excite me for a 25 mile ride through open agricultural land, so we shifted plans, and instead decided to meet at nearby O'Dowd Park, where I'd found some nice conifers and "whitewash" from a likely recent owl resident. A 15 minute or so walk back and forth was quite doable, even with a bit of a breeze.  Lovely bright, b...

  The weather was good today - warm for January, and with a big cold snap coming which will shut things down for a while, I decided to do a ride. My plan was to hit the nearby R.T. Anderson Conservation Area, which is a great spot for owls, and then run over to Blue Lake and try for Redpoll which was reported there recently.  The bike ride over was quite pleasant to start, although the trails were a bit snowy in places which made it more difficult - I had to be careful and go slow, which was fine, needed to pace myself with a 35 mile ride on tap. About 2 miles in, I realized that I'd forgotten my wallet - ugh, I was looking forward to stopping for a warm drink halfway. Oh well, I had plenty of water so would be ok.  A fun area, with a natural spring and some great bluff and woodland habitat Other than that, the ride over was easy, although the snowy bridge across the Minnesota River was a sign of things to come. I had forgotten that there is a spring there with a fountain...

 It's been pretty cold here as of late so my green birding opportunities have been limited. I've had some fun though sifting through House Finches at the feeder hoping for a Purple Finch (no luck yet) and playing with my camera to try to set it figured out a bit more (some luck). This past Sunday I went to the gym after breakfast. After I got done, I decided to take the slightly longer way home through agricultural fields just to the west. People have reported some Snow Buntings in my home county so I figured, why not? Birds tend to be drawn to gravel roads when it snows (which it was at the time). About halfway home - flashes of white in a flock of birds caught my eye - Snow Buntings!  Lovely day for a walk?!? I got home and did some stuff around the house, eager to get back out there. Unfortunately, fresh snow and ice ruled out using my bike - just not safe. While only around a mile as the crow flies, a hike would be around 2 miles each way to where I saw them because of pri...

  Blue skies and mild temps. Great day for a ride! After several days of anticipation, Thursday finally came along and it was time for another bike trip! Weather was comparatively mild, high of about 24 degrees, much nicer than my last ride. I geared up and finally got going around 1030am or so. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the wind light which made for a very nice ride over to my main destination - Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Blue Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant. After an uneventful 50 minutes or so going through town and an industrial area (where I made sure to scan for a Snowy Owl - no luck), I made it and was ready for a nice walk through the refuge.  Overall, the woods were pretty quiet, a chickadee here, a woodpecker there, and a few deer darting across the trail, chuffing their displeasure at me. Overall, mostly just the sound of my feet crunching on gravel underneath me. As I got closer to the marsh and open water some movement caught my eye...

Temperatures have continued to drop here...today's "high" was 10 degrees. However, I've been antsy to get out and try for some birds, so I decided to bundle up and go for it this afternoon. I got my winter gear together, and tried a different arrangement of layers, similar to what I used to use when played outdoor broomball years ago - coveralls with multiple thinner layers.  A chilly first ride! Yeah, I look a little ridiculous - but I'm quite visible to drivers, which is important. I decided to bike over a little patch of open water that I noticed nearby a while ago. There are also some nice restored grasslands and some wetlands along the route that gave me hope for a Rough-legged Hawk, maybe? After getting my new bike ready, I started out on the road. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering what I'm thinking! I wondered the same after the first mile... That wind was cold. My gear did what it needed to, and I was warm overall (but not too warm), but my fac...

The Friends of Sax Zim have protected over 25,000 acres of habitat already in the area! Well the first few days of my 2025 birding were really fun! While this blog is dedicated to my Green Big Year efforts, I actually decided to spend my first day birding at the place that I'm hoping that you'll help me support- Sax Zim Bog, in northern Minnesota. The Friends of Sax Zim Bog are doing some great work here to protect habitat and provide access to the bog for people, and I'm glad to be supporting them! Winterberry Bog - a FOSZB parcel, and the site manager My friend and I headed up early with hopes of getting a Great Gray Owl for Bird #1 of the year. While we got up there right around sunrise, some Common Ravens spoiled the effort with a flyover to cement their place as the first bird of 2025. Oh well, they're cool birds.  Rough-legged Hawk As we worked our way up to the McDavitt Rd area, we ran into some good bog birds, including a Northern Shrike and a Rough-legged Hawk,...