The Year In Review - 2009

2009 was a great year with many great sightings. I am fortunate to be able to spend so much time at Crex and Fish Lake and thankful for the many new friends I have met throughout the year.

Kathy J.

( click on all pictures to enlarge)

January: My trips to Crex become less frequent but there is a certain peacefulness in the silence.

February: One thing nice about fresh snow is that you can see signs of what traveled through the area . These wolf tracks were on Phantom Lake Road. Occasionally a set of tracks would wander off the road, go into the grasses. then return to join the pack.

March: The Trumpeters have returned. I spotted H56 swimming in the open water off of East Refuge Road. She and her uncollared mate were a highly visible pair from Main Dike Road in the refuge extension where they have nested for years. She was seen nesting but then disappeared. If anyone sees her, please send me a note.

March: Red-headed Blackbird males return a couple of weeks before the females to stake out their territories.

April: Canada Geese are nesting. Their nests are lined with a layer of down.

May: The deer are losing their winter coats and you can see patches of golden brown starting to appear.

May: (My favorite time of the year) If you're lucky you can catch sight of a Sandhill colt out in the open. This one was spotted on Abel Road.

May: The first Trumpeter cygnets start appearing. These were crossing the road in Fish Lake.

May: Green is beautiful after a long white winter.

May: This Sandhill was nesting across the road from Dike 1. Apparently it got too close to a pair of Red-headed Blackbirds as they started attacking it. If you look closely you'll see a patch of red from the male blackbird's wing as it attacks the Sandhill's butt.

June: Yellow-headed Blackbirds were quite visible this year at Phantom Lake.

June: The Loon pair on Phantom Lake had 2 chicks.

July: I got my first good look at a Badger as my granddaughter and I were sitting on a bench at the rest area eating our lunch.

July: Water levels were extremely low to non-existent during July. I watched to see if this Red Fox was going to go after the Mallard family but it just got a drink and trotted away. The water in this photo was completely gone the next week.

July: The drought yielded a bonanza for the Black Terns. This one was feeding on the small fish stranded in a mud puddle in the refuge extension.

July: This Karner Blue looked as if it was purposefully marked.

August: Trumpeter Swans and their cygnets are feasting on the wild rice in Upper North Fork Flowage

August: Egrets are frequently seen

September: John Menge leads a mushroom walk at Paint Mine by the St. Croix River

October: Chris Cold brings his Great Horned Owl to the Crex Fall Festival

November: Sandhills coming in to roost at sunset

December: As Dale B. says "The silent season has begun"

Hawk Owl Hunting

Northern Hawk Owl Hunting from Dale Bohlke on Vimeo.

This guy was busy hunting all morning. Shortly after sunrise he appeared to be chasing blue jays, at least they were raising quite a racket. He moved through the trees and only stopped occasionally on low branches to preen before flitting around. His flight was stuttered with hover maneuvers, short bursts, and low glides. Later in the morning the owl was out in the clear cut going to tree tops to hunt. It was backlit and did not show up on the frame so I moved around to get better lighting. He looked directly at me when a mouse squeaker was used but clearly the real thing interested him more. The take off is directly at me, flying within 10 feet of the tripod and camcorder.
Dale

Yesterday morning was beautiful and perfect except for the cloud at sunrise. The sudden drop in temperature created a great morning hoar frost and very little wind until mid morning. The hawk owl on Stolte Rd was actively hunting and I was lucky to capture a successful hunt on film. It appeared to be chasing blue jays early in the morning and caught vole later in the morning. The clip will be shared when I get it out of the camcorder. This may be the last chance to see this rare Crex bird unless your snowshoe in 2 miles. Stolte Road is not plowed in the winter.
Dale

The Wolf Pack is Back

After a long dry spell the black pack was once again caught in the camera trap. It is down to 4 (black alpha, black and gimpy, gray alpha female, and a shy gray) with the death of one of the young black adults. They have passed in front of the camera three times since the beginning of December, on three separate evenings. This pack had pups but none were seen on the trail cam. Two cameras are currently set up on the refuge and if the pups survived they should eventually be seen on one of the cameras.

December Color

Not much color around this time of year. However, the long civil twilight can make for some nice landscape color, especially when the snow mimics the sky color. This was taken earlier this month along Hickerson Road. Once again this is an HDR image to make the prairie visible in an otherwise silhouette image. I hope to make it up next week to check trail cams. Earlier this month I pulled one of the cameras for cleaning and the wolf pack chose that day to walk down the trail, perhaps they will have made their rounds again with the camera in place.

Dale

Tundra Swan

On Saturday, Dec. 5th, I was driving through Crex on my way home from photo club when I spotted a lone Tundra Swan on Dike 1. I thought it was strange that it was all alone but really didn't give it much thought. Today I found out from toomanykayaks that it was rescued the next day and was found to be suffering from severe lead poisoning. I should have known better than to have ignored it. I have no further details other than what I just posted.
So just a reminder for anyone to notify your local DNR if you should spot anything out of the ordinary like this.
Kathy J.

Cranes landing in snow

There were about 1000 cranes landing on Grettum when this video was taken on Friday afternoon, however the cranes left Grettum over the last 24 hours. Perhaps the temp dipping into the single digits had something to do with it. Late Friday afternoon they were exploring Dueholm and Fish Lake, probably looking for some open water to roost in.

The season of silence has begun.

Dale

The International Wolf Center

Visited the Internation wolf center in Ely,Mn on Friday afternoon November 27th for the first time ever. During the afternoon we got to see all the wolves at the Center.Shadow, an Arctic subspecies of the gray wolf, and is a brother to Malik.He is the Alpha Male of the Ambassador pack.Denali,Aidan youngest of the Ambasador pack are from northwestern subspecies.Grizzer, a Great Plains subspecies of the gray wolf.Maya, a Great Plains subspecies of the gray wolf is the Alpha female of the pack. We could also see Malik in his retirement pen.

They were quite active all afternoon long beacuse it was cool and overcast which enabled my wife Marge Cutter to take a lot of photos of the pack.I will post her photos here.

We also were there for two howls by the pack an extra special treat.

posted by Howard Cutter of Waconia Minnesota.

Wolf Kill

A hunter killed one of the Crex wolf pack during the recent deer hunting season. It was deposited in a parking lot near Buggert L. The wolf was an adult male weighing about 65 lb. There are two remaining black adults: one collared and the other known as "Gimpy" because of a deformed front leg. I have not seen a photo of the dead wolf but this photo from last spring is most likely the one that was killed. I hope to see a photo of the dead wolf to compare chest markings. Unfortunately, wolves and men have a long and tenuous relationship.

Dale

Trumpeter Swan 82K

Blogging is a new experience for me so there's going to be some trial and error and testing. This is my first try at posting a test video. I took it last February. Trumpeter Swans are one of the favorite things I love to see at Crex, Fish Lake and the surrounding areas. 82K is quite an old gal. She was captive reared and released in 1991 which means she was hatched in the spring of 1989. That makes her over 20 years old now. I've seen her in quite a few areas at Crex, in fact I just saw her yesterday on Phantom Lake with her new uncollared mate swimming among the 100 or so other swans there. She has a green collar so is pretty easy to spot as there aren't too many other swans with this color collar in the area. An interesting side note is that P94 (yellow collar) is her daughter born in 2002. P94's mate is J90 (red collar) and they nest on Kylingstad Flowage.
Watch the video closely and you can see her pick the ice out of her feathers.

Kathy J.

I am starting to work on this fall's video footage and put this piece from September together a couple weeks ago. Autumn is usually thought of as the time for bird migration but amphibians also migrate and prepare for winter; however not quite as dramatic as the crane migration. By the way there are still thousands of sandhills on Grettum Flowage.

Dale

I was intrigued by Marge's HDR talk at the last photo club meeting and decided to give it a try. This is after sunset on Grettum from late October.

Dale

Sax Zim Bog

Since it was deer hunting rifle season in Wisconsin, Kim Dauer and I (Kathy J.) decided to take our first ever trip to Sax Zim Bog in Minnesota to look for birds not typically found in our local area. Our goal birds were: Great Gray Owl, Hawk Owl, Gray Jay, and Boreal Chickadee. We basically had no idea where to go but I was able to download a small map from their website and somehow we managed to find our way around.

Our first bird sighting was what we thought was possibly a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk. It didn't seem to have much fear of us as it flew from tree to tree along the road.
(Note: click on any image to enlarge)

Several bird feeders are set up throughout the area. This was the first and only one we found on a road called "Owl Road". Black Capped Chickadees and Red Breasted Nuthatches were abundant at this feeder.


We noticed deer carcasses hanging from trees and finally figured out they were put there on purpose to provide feeding stations for birds.

Pairs of Gray Jays would fly in and pick pieces of suet off.

They allowed us some great photo opportunities.


A little farther down the road (which is now our favorite road), we noticed a small flock of Pine Grosbeaks eating seeds in the tree tops.

A thin layer of ice was on all the small ponds and around the edges of the lakes.

We saw several Trumpeter Swans on this small lake. If you enlarge the picture you can almost make them out.

We stopped at a gravel pit to take photos of the sun dog we saw.

This was possibly a Hawk Owl but all we saw was a silhouette so it is not a positive ID. If it was, it was the only owl we saw.

Sax Zim Bog includes private property, county property and state owned property. We caught a quick glimpse of a Black Billed Magpie flying by the state owned property. We were completely surprised to see one.

Beavers had been extremely busy on one road we were on. We were trying to figure out how this tree was even still standing.

Kim

We stopped to photograph a beautiful orange sunset over a lake.

Other birds we sighted but not mentioned above were: Northern Shrikes, Pine Siskins, Pileated Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jays, Bald Eagles, Rough Legged Hawks (dark morph), American Crows, Common Ravens, Ruffed Grouse and a Bohemian Waxwing. We certainly plan on returning again.

Visit their website for more information
http://moumn.org/sax-zim/index.html