[mou] Weekend birds...

[b.pomeroy]

Birders,
On Sunday morning we went birding in the Lakeside area looking at feeders 
looking for any unusual birds.  We stopped to get coffee at the gas station 
on E. Superior St., where there is some road work going on, and we were 
stretching and sipping coffee in the brisk morning sunlight (bbbrrr!!!) and 
we spotted a few dozen Bohemian Waxwings.  We went down to the trees they 
were in and for the next 40 minutes flock after flock of them flew from the 
lakeside to the hillside inland...and we counted 300+.
Also, on Saturday on the way to Pine county, I noticed the ditches in the 
rural areas of both Pine and Carlton were filled level across with snow.  I 
walked into the ditches and in some places the snow was hard packed from the 
snow plows...and the snow held my weight in many areas.  I sank up to my 
knees in some of the ditches, but a lot of the hard packed snow held my 165 
#'s very well.  The owls were into the fields farther than in they were 
before this last snow storm.  They were a lot closer to farm outbuildings 
and sitting on fence posts out in the fields and pastures.  The owls were a 
lot harder to find, and the numbers were a lot lower.
I talked to several other birders in the Barnum and Mahtowa areas who said 
the birds were farther south and west than earlier in the past.  They had 
come up Hwy. 61 and birded Pine and Carlton counties but thought we were 
"exaggerating" the numbers, but they saw owls and were happy.   They also 
thanked the bird lists for alerting them to the southward push.
Bruce

"I care to live, only to entice people to
 look at Nature's loveliness."
-- John Muir