Though I’ve birded a lot in North America I’ve never seen sage-grouse or prairie chickens and I’ve never seen them courting at their leks. Today I’m filling that gap by joining She Flew Birding Tours for the Grouse Lek Extravaganza in Colorado 19-25 April.
Our tour will be on the road every day and ultimately span Colorado east and west. We’ll visit a wide variety of habitats and elevations from the prairies to mountains to basins. Snow on high and spring on the plains.
In the photo below our guide Frank Nicoletti is telling me about the features of this bird. For instance, the brown primaries indicate it’s immature.
Frank Nicoletti tells me about the features of my Life Bird great gray owl, 26 Feb 2025 (photo by Lisa Walker)
I was especially fascinated by the ridge of feathers between the owl’s eyes which directs sound to each ear independently.
Great gray owl at Sax-Zim Bog, 26 Feb 2025 (photo by Frank Nicoletti)
On our way back to the car I noticed very large canine footprints. A gray wolf (Canis lupus) had walked the road before we got there.
Gray wolf prints along the road at Sax-Zim Bog, 26 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
At the Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center we paused for a group photo: Lisa and Chad Walker and me.
Lisa & Chad Walker & myself at Sax-Zim Bog, 26 Feb 2025 (photo by Frank Nicoletti)
Lisa and Chad had heard barred owls (Strix varia) hooting on their property but had never seen one. We found their Life Bird roosting by the road.
Barred owl, Sax-Zim Bog, 26 Feb 2025 (photo by Frank Nicoletti)
And we found three snowy owls, surprisingly, at the refinery in Superior, Wisconsin. Lisa spotted the first one on the roof near the center of this photo.
Refinery in Superior, WI with snowy owl’s building in the center of the photo (by Kate St. John)
Moving closer, can you see his silhouette in the center of this photo? He’s on the roof above the red life preserver.
Snowy owl silhouetted on a roof at the refinery in Superior, Wisconsin, 27 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Best seen in my digiscoped photo.
Young male snowy owl on a roof at the refinery, Superior, Wisconsin, 27 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
All told we saw 32 species including: common goldeneyes, a ruffed grouse in a tree, 3 snowy owls, 3 great gray owls, barred owl, northern shrike, Canada jay, black-billed magpies, evening grosbeaks, redpolls, red crossbills and pine siskins.
Since I happened to visit Minnesota during a warm spell when it was above freezing every day, we didn’t see any boreal owls. They had no reason to be out sunning in the open.
And today we’re back in the deep freeze in Pittsburgh with 17°F.
The mountain of ice on Lake Superior was glacial blue in the distance, 16 Feb 2014. People provide some scale (photo by Kate St. John)
27 February 2025
This morning I am in Duluth, Minnesota where today’s temperature will range from 30°F to 39°F, far warmer than my last visit in February 2014 when it was –16°F to 0°F.
That was the winter of the Polar Vortex when it was so cold for so long that Lake Superior froze solid — a rare occurrence because it is so deep. When our birding group reached the shore we saw big hills of ice and very few birds. So we got out of the van and climbed the lake.
Standing on Lake Superior’s ice while I take this photo of the mountain of ice in the distance, 16 Feb 2014 (photo by Kate St. John)
This week I won’t be climbing the lake because nearly all of it is open water (shades of blue on the map). In fact, as of last Saturday, total ice cover for all five lakes is only 38.5% (gray and black on the map).
Boreal Owl (photo by Christoph Moning from Wikimedia Commons)
Northern hawk-owl (photo by Jessica Botzan)
Black-backed woodpecker (photo by Patty McGann)
A pair of Canada Jays (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Boreal chickadee at Sax-Zim Bog (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Bohemian waxwing eating berry (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Pine grosbeak (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
26 February 2025
When I was in Minnesota in February 2014 I saw Life Birds that can’t be seen in Pittsburgh. Six are shown above plus a potential Life Bird — the boreal owl. Four of the seven occur across northern North America and Eurasia. The other three are found only in North America.
After a month of excitement over Schenley Park’s great horned owls nest, I’m switching gears this week to find the owls I missed in Minnesota eleven years ago.
From the top of their heads to the tip of their tails great gray owls (Strix nebulosa) are the world’s largest owl by length with a wingspan up to 5 feet long.
Although it appears to be more massive than other owls of the northern forest, its actual body mass is at least 15% smaller than the more common Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), with which it shares habitat. Thus its plumage makes up much of the bulk of the bird, allowing it to withstand the bitter cold of northern winters.
To give you an idea of their size, here’s a video from the Owl Research Institute of banding an adult male great gray owl and his chicks in (probably) northern Montana in 2020. Note that the male is smaller than his mate.
Portuguese man o’war jellyfish, Spanish River Park, Boca Raton, FL, 21 Jan 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
25 January 2025
This week was cold and drizzly during our family visit to Boca Raton. My brother said it was like Seattle weather. Yes.
We went to the beach on Tuesday where I saw many Portuguese man o’war (Physalia physalis) washed up on the sand. They are named for the topside bubble that resembles the sail on a Portuguese Man O’War ship. Not technically jellyfish they are actually hydrozoa, small colonial predatory animals that sting powerfully enough to kill their prey. Do Not Touch, especially while swimming!
Best Birds were seven magnificent frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) soaring in the cold north wind near their northernmost point on the Atlantic coast. (This Wikimedia photo is from Colombia.)
Flying into Pittsburgh on Thursday I saw ice on all three rivers, especially on the Allegheny so I stopped at Duck Hollow yesterday on my way the grocery store. You can see that a lot of the river is ice free but the mud bar is surrounded.
Ice on the Monongahela at Duck Hollow, 24 Jan 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Listen as floating ice scrapes past the dark green channel marker (in the center of this video) while 125 ring-billed gulls lounge on the ice.
Ice scrapes past the channel marker in the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow, 24 Jan 2025 (video by Kate St. John)
It’s Crazy Cold in the U.S. right now. While half the continent is unusually cold a winter storm is sweeping through the deep South. You know it’s wild when there’s a Blizzard Warning in coastal Louisiana today!
But I woke up in South Florida this morning and I feel mighty lucky. My husband and I started planning this trip two months ago and just happened to pick the same week as a continental cold snap.
South Florida is not particularly warm right now and it’s going to rain shower every day but I can’t complain. Instead of snow I’m in the land of snowy egrets. And they don’t care if they get wet.
Yesterday I discovered European Wildlife by Lukáš Pich on YouTube and this beautiful video, Wild Czechia – My Best Wildlife Encounters of 2023, featured below. Filmed in the Czech Republic in 2023 the images are gorgeous, the action is fascinating and all is enhanced by the sound track.
For North Americans most of the birds, insects and animals in the video will be unfamiliar but we have a few in common. Watch for the leaping red fox, a family of ravens, barn swallows in flight, and a flock of great egrets taking off. There are also many species that resemble our own ants, staghorn beetles, dragonflies, hawks, owls, woodpeckers and songbirds. For instance, we don’t have great crested grebes in North America (photo at top) but it has traits similar to our horned and western grebes.
At 1:00 minute into the video a bird enters the frame and poses to sing. I guarantee that you will be able to identify this bird by its song (see *1 below).
(3) Though I’ve never to Czechia the Czech Republic brings to mind old buildings and the capital city, Prague. I found beautiful photos of its wild places including the Javornik Mountains.
White garden snails encrust a fencepost in southern Spain, 11 Sep 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
7 October 2024
One of the strangest things we saw on the WINGS Spain in Autumn tour last month were many snail encrusted fenceposts and plants along the road. The snails were everywhere in the dry hot areas of southern Spain. Why?
Snails as far as the eye can see near Tarifa, Spain, 11 Sep 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
White garden snails or Mediterranean snails (Theba pisana) are an edible land snail native to the Mediterranean. We saw them up on posts and plants because we were visiting during the hot dry season when the snails are aestivating to escape the heat.
Discovering Doñana describes their life cycle:
Our land snails are mainly nocturnal, since at night the presence of predators decreases and the environmental conditions are more conducive to them by significantly increasing the humidity of the environment. During the favorable time of the year, with mild temperatures and adequate environmental humidity, land snails feed in the herbaceous layer closest to the ground, being able to remain active for a good part of the day as well.
But when spring gives way to summer, temperature increases and the humidity decreases, producing a truly hostile environment to them. …. To overcome these unfavorable conditions, which usually begin in June, land snails enter a state of dormancy … [called] aestivation.
The snails climb up where the temperature is cooler above ground. Then they close their shells with a sticky secretion that adheres to their chosen plant or post, leaving a tiny hole for breathing. The snails go to sleep.
Theba pisana on a reed at the shore near Tarifa, Spain, 12 Sep 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Their high perch keeps them safe from ground predators but not from birds that stop by for a snack. Discovering Doñana shows photos of a kestrel and a lark eating snails on fenceposts.
Theba pisana on dried weeds near Brazo del Este, Spain, 7 Sep 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)Every white dot is a snail! Near Tahivilla, Spain, 11 Sep 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
When the season changes and the weather becomes cooler and more humid, the snails come down. If you visit southern Spain in the winter you won’t see them.