Winter finally sets in
Long after the winter solstice, winter finally made its way to Minnesota. After a historically hot December with no days below 0 degrees (and just one day below freezing in November), January is finally giving us some degrees below zero.
Over the last week, temperatures shifted from a high of 29 degrees on Wednesday, Jan. 10 to a high of –2 on Monday, Jan. 15. Temperatures are expected to recover to 20s or 30s in the next week.
While the dip below zero has felt jarring in such a warm winter, these temperatures are still not as cold as they might be. “Typically, some of the coldest weather of the year occurs in the middle of January, from about Jan 10-30. That last 20 days, the temperature can be pretty bitter,” John explained.
“And, historically, the coldest day of the year is Jan. 25, my brother’s birthday,” he continued. “If you look back over the past 75-100 years, that day comes up more than any other as the coldest day of the year.”
Great Horny Owls
Despite the cold weather, things are heating up for night owls. John’s friend Chad from Deer River has heard Great Horned Owls hooting as part of their courtship displays.
Great Horned Owls put a tremendous amount of work into raising their offspring, and the effort starts early in the year. Once they’ve selected mates, they’ll lay their eggs. In Minnesota, egg-laying typically occurs in the last two weeks of January. The chicks hatch in late February.
Raising chicks and keeping them warm through the tail end of winter is a gargantuan effort for the parents, but the owlets need a lot of training to learn to hunt before becoming independent in the fall.
Spotting a Great Horned Owl can be difficult, since they are strictly nighttime hunters and are quite secretive during the day. This is for good reason: Any owl caught out in the open in daytime runs a risk of getting mobbed by a horde of angry crows.
The crows, in turn, have good reason to give the owls grief. “Great Horned Owls eat a lot of crows,” John explained. “They find out where the crows are roosting at night, and they zip in there and the next thing you know it’s bedlam in the bedroom.”
“That’s never a good thing if you’re a crow and a Great Horned Owl comes to the party,” John continued. “It’s not how you want your day to end. Getting awakened in the middle of the night while your neighbor is getting killed by a Great Horned Owl has got to be a pretty shaky experience.”
Due to this fight-on-sight dynamic, following the sound of an angry flock of crows is one of the easiest ways for us humans to find Great Horned Owls. “When you hear hundreds – well, dozens – of crows screaming at the top of their voices, if you wander in, you will probably discover a Great Horned Owl nearby.” Crows also mob other owl species, so you’re also likely to find a Barred Owl at the center of a corvid cacophony.
While species like the Northern Hawk Owl, Snowy Owl, and Great Gray Owl will also anger local crows, they have mostly remained in their northern territories this year. The mild winter and low snow levels have made it easier for them to hunt prey nearer to their summer breeding range. Other owls have mostly remained in the north, since it’s such a mild winter and food is abundant in the north.
“There’s plenty of food and plenty of territory up north,” John explained. “If food is the driving factor, and with low snow totals and warm weather, there’s not much reason for them to come all the way south to Northern Minnesota to spend the winter.
“So, if you are one of those people lucky enough to see one of those odd owls, you are one of a few because there are not very many around this winter.”
Rare bird alert: Grey-crowned Rosy-Finch
To his great delight, John was lucky enough to see a rare bird last week. His friend Sean Conrad brought him to check out a Grey-crowned Rosy-Finch that has been frequenting the feeders at Bowen’s Lodge. The folks there were kind enough to let John know about the strange visitor, and even allow him and interested visitors to stop by to see it.
Grey-crowned Rosy-Finches are typically montane birds that are rarely seen in Minnesota. According to a post by Jack North in the KAXE-KBXE Season Watch Facebook groups, just two other sightings have been recorded in Itasca county, both in the 1970s. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, they are the highest altitude nesting birds in North America, and the easternmost edge of their range is western South Dakota.
How it ended up here is an open question. “That will remain a mystery. Whether it came on the head of a weather system or if it’s just a finch that got its directions confused and went marching about looking for food, one never knows. But it’s a pretty reliable source of food up there: they have a wonderful spread of suet and seeds. A bird at Bowen’s Resort is a well-fed bird.”
The folks at Bowen’s Lodge gave permission for John to publicize the sighting and offered to let interested visitors come see the finch. “If you would like to maybe get a glimpse of this bird, you can go up there. Just follow the road to the end and the feeder is right there. You can stop there and have a look,” John said.
“I would say ‘don’t be a bother’, but most of you birders know better than to be a bother,” he continued. “So, if you are in the area and you’d like to have a look at this unusual bird, you might head up that way and take a look.”
(Since this report aired on Tuesday, at least 3 folks have made the trip and reported successful sightings! Visitors include Jack North, Brandon Lentz, and Lorie Shaull. Do you have sightings to share? Join our KAXE-KBXE Season Watch Facebook group!)
Reports from Birthday Boy Sean:
On the drive to and from Bowen’s Lodge, which happened to be on Sean's birthday, Sean regaled John with tales of his outdoor adventures over the last week. In the waters around Grand Rapids, Sean spotted Common Goldeneyes, Mallards, Trumpeter Swans, and other waterfowl crowding thte small areas of open water.
“Open water becomes a real precious resource, and these birds like teh Common Goldeneye and the Mallard and the Trumpeter Swan who have elected to stay the winter will be looking for those kinds of places. So, don’t drive by open water without giving it a close examination,” John cautioned. “You may be rewarded with some real beautiful sightings there with some of the waterfowl that are hanging out in the area.”
Sax-Zim Bog
John was on the hunt for rare owls and headed off to Sax-Zim Bog in hopes of finding one. While his quest for owls was unsuccessful, he did find large flocks of Pine Siskins.
These winter residents of Minnesota were on the road gathering grit for their gizzards. Occasionally, the flock would fly up to speckled alders to feast on the seeds.
In addition to speckled alder seeds, Pine Siskins love to eat birch seeds. They are such voracious feeders that it’s rare to find fresh snow under a birch; within even an hour or two, the white snow will be littered with discarded bracts and fallen seeds courtesy of the neighborhood birds.
Colorful roadsides
On the drive home from the Sax-Zim Bog, John was admiring all the contrast between willow species. Each species seems to have its own color, and the colors also vary within a single plant. Stems tend to be charcoal-dark, but new growth has a myriad of colors from coral, yellow, burgundy and everything in between.
Shrub willows only grow 10 feet high. They form a wash of color with bands of dark bark near the ground, and a layer of vivid color from the new growth. This is set off with a background of white-barked aspen trees. It’s quite a sight!
A vole vacancy
John has a mystery forming outside his window. The snowbanks by his birdfeeder normally “look like Swiss cheese” because the voles are so busy gathering seeds. This year, there are none – why? Do they have sources of food elsewhere, or is the population down?
John isn’t sure, but he is missing his Barred Owl sightings – one normally hangs out by his feeder to pick off errant voles.
He’d love to hear from you – are you seeing voles?
At West Rapids Elementary, where John visits weekly to go on phenology walks with the students, he has seen lots of vole holes in the snow but no tracks.
Clear days
Partially clear weather have brought some beautiful displays to the January skies. Sundogs have been on display. These are caused by sunlight striking ice particles in the air. The ice particles, which have been aligned by the wind, act as prisms to scatter the light.
As cloud cover increases, sundogs become more fully formed. In the last week, John has seen some which have formed nearly-complete circles, with the only aberation due to interference from the horizon.
As the sun gets higher, these arcs will form complete circles. The best ones form in late February and early March, when the sun is a perfect angle: low enough to form sundogs, but high enough to avoid being cut off by the horizon. In the summer, the angle of the sun is too high to form sun dogs.
That does it for this week! For more phenology, subscribe to our Season Watch Newsletter or visit the Season Watch Facebook page.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
