Recently award-winning local outdoor photographer David Johnson took a rare close-up of a hawk. How Mr. Johnson navigates—even with telephoto lenses—to take the many and varied exquisite pictures of wildlife he does is his secret. This hawk, by the way, might be one of Santa’s helpers, spotting the good children and the bad children from above and getting that list back to Santa.
Due to cold weather Cook County birders had to move the 2016 Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC) from Saturday, December 17 to Sunday, which was even colder but not as windy.
“We actually did better than the temporary counts we did on Saturday morning,” said CBC compiler Jeremy Ridlbauer. “So we did count our circle area of birds and have a good list compared to previous years. Thanks to all who birded both Saturday and Sunday (official count day), and worked in the cold and wind!”
Despite the inclement weather, results of the count were very good.
Ridlbauer said, “We had 46 species on the count day, and 47 species so far on the count week. We’ve had over 3,100 individual birds, which is twice as many as last year.”
The Grand Marais counting circle area is a 7.5-mile-radius circle from a point three miles south of the middle of Devil Track Lake. The count circle covers Highway 61 to Lindskog Road and north, some of County Road 60, the Gunflint Trail to the county landfill road, Pine Mountain Road to the back side of Elbow Lake, Devil Track Road to Bally Creek Road, Ball Club Road to The Grade, Pike Lake Road, and Highway 61 west to Cascade Lodge, and all of the lakeshore between Lindskog Road and Cascade Lodge.
“We’re still missing some species that we typically expect to see,” Ridlbauer said, “So if you’ve seen any not on this list or others between 12:01 a.m. Thursday, December 15 and 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, December 21, we can still count it for the count week species list. If you saw any of these on count day, Sunday, we can promote them to the count day results.”
Some of the species spotted during the count week include: Black-backed Woodpecker, Brown Thrasher, Great Gray Owl, Great Horned Owl, Green-winged Teal, Harlequin, Hoary Redpoll, Mourning Dove, Sharp-shinned Hawk, and Townsend’s Solitaire, Red Crossbill.
Thanks to the Java Moose for providing a meeting place at the end of the day.
Here are the current results in order of abundance from Saturday and the people counting during the week:
Black-capped
Chickadee
Pine Grosbeak
Cedar Waxwing
American Goldfinch
Purple Finch
Common Raven
American Robin
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Downy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
Common Redpoll
Herring Gull
American Crow
Common Goldeneye
European Starling
Pine Siskin
Rock Pigeon
Hairy Woodpecker
Evening Grosbeak
Bald Eagle
Pileated Woodpecker
Long-tailed Duck
White-winged Crossbill
Dark-eyed Junco
Gray Jay
Ruffed Grouse
White-breasted
Nuthatch
American Tree Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Red-bellied
Woodpecker
Canada Goose
Northern Shrike
Rough-legged Hawk
White-throated
Sparrow
Bohemian Waxwing
Bufflehead Fox Sparrow
Harris’ Sparrow
Hermit Thrush
Mallard
Red-breasted
Merganser
Red-tailed Hawk
Red-winged Blackbird
Song Sparrow
Unknown Buteo
Varied Thrush
Red Crossbill
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