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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edward" data-source="post: 1283490" data-attributes="member: 822">Thursday 29 MayWe were up at 0430 a.m. to be picked up at 0500 by Duluth birder Sparky Stensaas for a day's birding at the famed Sax-Zim Bog about 45 minutes away from Duluth. I would highly recommend Sparky as a guide. Not only does he have intimate knowledge of the area and its birds, just as importantly, he's a very nice guy and excellent company. He can be contacted through his website (<a href="http://www.stoneridgepress.com/" target="_blank">http://www.stoneridgepress.com/</a>). After passing through the small town of Cotton, we made a stop on Arkola Road where Sparky thought we might see one of our targets and sure enough there were eight Sharp-tailed Grouse lekking on the far side of the field. A distinctive song drifted over the fields, Western Meadowlark, pronounced Sparky and after a lot of searching I managed to find it in my scope, considerably further away than I had expected. I think Western Meadowlarks have the loudest song I've ever heard. If you are looking for singing meadowlarks (which admittedly in North Dakota is like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack), guess how far away it is and multiply the distance by ten. You'll find that a bird that sounds a few feet away may in fact be perched on a rock which is barely in view. Also in the field were a couple of Upland Sandpipers, three Sandhill Cranes and best of all, a Striped Skunk. We drove on a bit further, with Sparky listening out of the window for interesting song. He stopped by a stand of trees and said he'd heard something interesting but he wasn't going to tell us what it was, we'd have to find it and identify it ourselves first (I like that in a guide!). A White-throated Sparrow wasn't the bird we were looking for, nor was a Red-eyed Vireo but in the same tree I got on to a very active passerine. "I think I've got a Mourning Warbler," I told Sparky and that was the bird he had stopped the car for. We obtained superb views of this bird and a Least Flycatcher close by, a species Simmi and I had both seen in Iceland. A mile or so further on, the trees became denser on each side of the road and Sparky suggested we got out to see what we could find. He was soon alerted to the presence of a couple of Boreal Chickadees and we got brief but clear views. Then he heard another key target, and began to pish the bird. It was a protracted chase, the bird flying over the road and singing out of view a number of times before we managed to pin it down and get the scope on it, a superb singing Connecticut Warbler, a bird famed for its shy and retiring habits. Movement in a nearby tree briefly distracted us, and it was a dazzling male Blackburnian Warbler, still as impressive as when I’d first seen it in New York two years ago. A family of Gray Jays was co-operative, but a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher stubbornly sang out of reach. We took a side road, waiting round for a Great Grey Owl which had been seen here the previous two days (and that morning we later heard) but was to elude us all day, despite Sparky being quietly confident that we’d see it. We passed a house where the owner had painted in massive letters on a sign outside that “trespassers would be violated” (the mind boggles), but a brief stop at a safe distance from the house brought us Nashville Warbler, a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and an excellent trio of vireos in the same tree, Red-eyed, Warbling and Philadelphia, and superb, prolonged views of a singing Lincoln's Sparrow. As we were watching the sparrow, a peculiar whirring noise permeated the air. Wilson's Snipe, said Sparky, to our surprise (winnowing Wilson's Snipe sounds very different to drumming Common Snipe, which is an ever-present sound in Iceland in spring and summer). Telephone wires held the first of many Brewer's Blackbirds on the trip, and three Broad-winged Hawks were seen in quick succession. Like all good guides, Sparky has a great ear. While he was driving and fully engrossed in telling us the story of a colourful stay in small town Finland, he broke off mid-sentence with the words 'Golden-winged Warbler' and getting out of the car we soon saw a superb male singing from the tree tops. Close by were two male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, a bird I'd seen before in Iceland and New York, but only as juveniles and females. Seeing a male was really like a new species. Sparky and I were just discussing the merits of the names buzzard v hawk when he screeched to a halt as a late Rough-legged Hawk was hovering over the fields (I was interrupted here by a phone call from my wife in Iceland telling me that she had just been shaken by an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale - I was a bit peeved to have missed it). On County Rd 319 (Stone Lake Rd)  an American Bittern was seen at point blank range in a roadside ditch, a Veery showed up briefly, a Purple Finch sang from atop a bush and a Black-throated Green Warbler moved through the trees, but a singing LeConte's Sparrow remained frustratingly out of sight. After a very late lunch in Cotton (hot beef sandwich good, diner coffee undrinkable) we continued our search for Black-backed Woodpecker and Great Grey Owl, seeing Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Golden-crowned Kinglet (briefly!) en route. A roving warbler flock contained three striking males, Magnolia, Cape May and Blackburnian and a point-blank Red-breasted Nuthatch made this a particularly productive stop but the owl and woodpecker still failed to show. The day was drawing to an end when Sparky said we'd give the woodpecker one last chance and at Blue Spruce Road off County Rd 133 a fantastic Black-backed Woodpecker quickly appeared, a great reward for Sparky's dogged persistence and hard work. We heard several displaying Ruffed Grouse at Sax-Zim here and at Rice Lake, although 'heard' is perhaps not the word as the wing-flapping is so intense that your body feels it as much as hears it. We dropped Sparky off in Duluth and headed out on to Park Point as daylight faded, finding the trip's first Dunlin on the recreation area and a lifer Redhead on the lake. Overnight at Motel 6, Duluth.More photos from Simmi taken in Sax-Zim Bog, MN1. American Bittern2. Red-tailed Hawk3. Broad-winged Hawk4. Lincoln's Sparrow5. Wilson's Snipe</blockquote>

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