At my semi-regular solo lunch at the pizza place below my office ($5 spaghetti & meatballs!…Tuesdays only), I was reading the latest Audubon Magazine—the Bird Photography Awards issue. Some amazing photos were chosen as top winners; The one that stood out to me was Continue Reading

In winter, several boreal forest species move south (and east and west) in search of a more consistent food supply. Pine Grosbeaks (the rosy red birds are the males) and Bohemian Waxwings are two such species. Pine Grosbeaks do nest in the Rocky Mountains but Bohemians Continue Reading

Well ‘Oscar Outlook,’ our little home weather station couldn’t handle this morning’s bitter cold (Friday). Like the dash thermometers in minivans and SUVs, it bottomed out at minus 22 or so and then just started flashing dashed lines. Larry Weber, my neighbor (a ‘country neighbor’ about 5 miles away) recorded minus 28 but that was well before dawn…and other nearby cities like Moose Lake hit minus 33, so it is a safe bet that we were minus 30 too. I love it! I’ll take minus 30 and sun over 40 above in winter.

What were the real world effects of such temperatures? In the photo and video above, I demonstrate the instant vaporization of heated water that occurs at temps below minus 20. The water explodes into vapor with an audible hiss.

If you happened to step outside in the predawn darkness, like I did, you’d also hear ‘trees popping.’ Yes, trees do pop—sometimes like gunshots—but more often like firecrackers. This sound is created by the fact that interior sap is freezing and expanding as the wood is contracting until something gives. Every few seconds I hear another pop. Maple trees are especially susceptible to this as they are near the northern edge of their range anyway. When folks talk about ‘frost cracks’ in maples, this is what has caused them.

I did go out and shoot a bit. A cooperative flock of Pine Grosbeaks in the Wrenshall City Park let me approach quite close (an upcoming post). I shot them until I couldn’t feel my middle two fingers (which have been frostbit/nipped many times).

How cold was it? The ‘winner’ was International Falls with minus 46 degrees—a new record cold for this date and fifth coldest ever recorded there. Minnesota’s official all-time record low is minus 60 at Tower on February 2nd, 1996…Unofficially it was minus 64 at Embarrass on the same day.

THE FOLLOWING ARE OBSERVED LOW TEMPERATURES THROUGH 900 AM FRIDAY JANUARY 21, 2011. TEMPERATURES ARE IN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

TEMP LOCATION
—- —————
-46 INTERNATIONAL FALLS
-46 BABBITT
-43 EMBARRASS
-43 BIGFORK
-43 ASH LAKE
-43 EFFIE
-40 LITTLEFORK
-40 BIRCHDALE
-39 ORR
-38 MINONG
-38 CASS LAKE
-38 SQUAW LAKE
-38 CUTFOOT
-38 BOVEY
-38 KABETOGAMA
-38 CRANE LAKE
-37 MARGIE
-37 HILL CITY
-37 ELY
-37 RICE LAKE
-36 LONG LAKE
-36 JACOBSON
-36 BARNES
-36 COTTON
-36 MAKINEN
-36 LONGVILLE
-36 PINE RIVER
-36 SEAGULL LAKE
-36 WRIGHT
-35 LAKE VERMILION
-35 KABETOGAMA
-34 MCGRATH
-34 ASH RIVER
-34 GUNFLINT LAKE
-34 HAYWARD
-34 LIND
-34 MOOSE LAKE
-33 GRAND RAPIDS
-33 SAGINAW
-33 COHASSET
-33 MCGREGOR
-33 AITKIN
-33 HIBBING
-33 JENKINS
-33 EMILY
-33 BRAINERD
-33 MOOSE LAKE
-33 SOUTH RANGE
-32 GRANTSBURG
-31 SILVER BAY
-31 TWO HARBORS
-31 LEADER
-31 DEER RIVER
-31 SIREN
-31 GRANTSBURG
-31 HINCKLEY
-30 BREEZY POINT
-30 TUCKER LAKE
-30 GLIDDEN
-30 GORDON

And just for fun…

Minnesota Temperature Conversion Chart

50 Fahrenheit (10 C)
New Yorkers try to turn on the heat.
Minnesotans plant gardens.

40 Fahrenheit (4.4 C)
Californians shiver uncontrollably
Minnesotans sunbathe.

35 Fahrenheit (1.6 C)
Italian Cars won’t start
Minnesotans drive with the windows down.

32 Fahrenheit (0 C)
Distilled water freezes
Minnesotans water gets thicker.

0 Fahrenheit (-17.9 C)
New York City landlords finally turn on the heat.
Minnesotans have the last cookout of the season.

-40 Fahrenheit (-40 C)
Hollywood disintegrates.
Minnesotans rent some videos.

-60 Fahrenheit (-51 C)
Mt. St. Helen’s freezes.
Minnesota Girl Scouts sell cookies door-to-door.

-100 Fahrenheit (-73 C)
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole
Minnesotans pull down their earflaps.

-173 Fahrenheit (-114 C)
Ethyl alcohol freezes.
Minnesotans get frustrated when they can’t thaw the keg.

-459.4 Fahrenheit (-273 C)
Absolute zero; all atomic motion stops.
Minnesotans start asking, “cold enough for ya?”

-500 Fahrenheit (-295 C)
Hell freezes over.
The Vikings win the Super Bowl

I spent the afternoon up in the Sax-Zim Bog hoping to find some teams participating in our (‘our’ = Friends of Sax-Zim Bog organization) 2011 BRRRRDathon. While I did not find any teams, I did find two of my favorite North Woods birds—the Black-backed Woodpecker and the Northern Goshawk.

Normally, Goshawk sightings are a blur of grayish blue as they zip by, or over, or behind you and disappear into the woods. Shy and secretive, most encounters make you feel like you’ve terrified the poor bird. They flush as soon as you stop the car. It is because of this that I’ve never been able to photograph a Gos away from Hawk Ridge in migration…Until today. An immature bird was hanging out a farm that has ducks and probably chickens and certainly pigeons…all acceptable Gos food. He/she flushed several times but always perched again, sometimes surprisingly low to the ground. I only got a couple distant shots.
They make their living by ambushing Ruffed Grouse, Snowshoe Hares, Red Squirrels (and pigeons, chickens) in deciduous and mixed forests in the northern states.

Later I followed a foot trail to a logged area that has hosted both tridactyl woodpecker species—American Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpecker. Both are extremely ‘tame’ birds…often allowing approach to within a dozen feet.
There were several Hairys but no Black-backeds. I did hear the sound of flaking bark a hundred yards further in, beyond where the packed foot trail ended. I’d forgotten my snowshoes but decided to forge on anyway…It turned into a heart-pumping slog through several hundred yards of knee to thigh-deep snow, tripod slung over my shoulder. But I was rewarded with a very close encounter of a male (yellow cap) Black-backed Woodpecker busily flaking bark from a dying Tamarack. He was trying to locate the larval grubs of Larch Beetles that have infected many Tamaracks (“larch”) in Minnesota.

I shot from 15 or 20 feet, filling the frame. He barely acknowledged this lumbering five-toed creature that was pointing a black thing at him. He looks pot-bellied but this is an illusion created by the fluffing of his feathers to keep his extremities warm. Note his three toes…Most woodpeckers have four toes, two pointing forward and two pointing back. I shot lots of video, some in slow-motion 60fps. This was the best still image.

Male Black-backed Woodpecker; Canon 7D w/Canon 400mm f5.6, f5.6 at 1/250, ISO 400, pop-up flash, tripod

I published Duluth naturalist’s David Benson’s Owls of the North a few years ago…Great little book, if you haven’t seen it. Fascinating info on all our northern owls…including the Northern Hawk Owl. Here is an excerpt about Hawk Owl hunting:

Hawk Owls hunt from a convenient perch, searching for prey by sight and then swooping quickly down for the kill. They will chase prey short distances, and sometimes they hunt from perch to perch, dropping down for prey and then swinging up to a nearby perch if they fail to catch their target. Hawk Owls have also been seen hovering over potential prey—unusual behavior for an owl [see photos this post—Sparky]

Alone among owls, Hawk Owls have a falcon-like notch in their bill to sever the spinal cords of their prey. Owl species often use their bills in a similar way, and presumably the notch helps the Hawk Owl to do this with more efficiency.

Congruent with their daytime activity, Hawk Owls rely on sight more than hearing for hunting. Their ears are symmetrical, so they apparently do not need the kind of precision hearing used by most other owls. When scanning for prey, Hawk Owls lean forward almost to the horizontal and pump their tails (a most “un-owly” posture). When they strike, their drop off the perch can look almost like and accidental fall until they begin to glide to the kill.

—from Owls of the North by David Benson (Stone Ridge Press, 2008, ISBN-978-0-9760313-4-5)

Well, you can’t end the year without a little reflection. My wildlife photography took a back seat to two things: the two wild critters in our home—Birk Anders, now 28 months, and new little Bjorn Nikolas born May 6th—and to HD Video.

To make the Top Ten 2010 the image had to have at least three of these characteristics of a great photo: Stunning light, great Bocah (background), interesting behavior, sharpness, perfect or unique composition, rare animal.

These may not be your choices…Nor would they necessarily be chosen by a magazine editor. But they are my favorites. Like parents, photographers can be quite biased to their own images…After all, we know the back story of each photo. Some photos become quite large in our minds because of the circumstances…Maybe we’d sat in a sweltering blind for four hours, or possibly it’s an image we’d been trying to capture for years.

In the coming weeks I will also post my Top Ten Birds, Top Ten Mammals, etc.

Here they are in no particular order.

A hard September frost is fairly unusual, so I escaped daddy duty for a couple hours to shoot whatever I found in our nearby WMA (Wildlife Management Area). I knew I had to work fast because the rising sun would soon melt the ice crystals. This dogwood leaf was perfectly rimmed with frost and I positioned the tripod so it would have a nice dark background with a stop or two of underexposure. I like it for its graphic simplicity.

Shooting wildlife with a 10-20mm lens? Crazy! But it works here. Yes, I was very close to this wild Black Bear, but it was at a bear feeding station called the Vince Shute Wild Bear Sanctuary. Bears wander in from miles around to feed on nuts, fruit, berries and seeds provided by the staff. It’s like a giant birdfeeding station for bears. They are more focused on each other and the food to worry about humans. The wide angle accentuates the shape of the limb and highlights the tenuous perch of the cub. It was a surprise favorite from a morning of shooting.

This made the Top Ten because it was simply an amazing experience. While stopping to photograph a flower, I discovered a family of Northern Hawk Owls, the three newly fledged youngsters begging food mercilessly from their parents. Mostly they were high up with gray-sky backgrounds, but this little guy—clutching tightly a dead vole his mommy or daddy brought—conveniently perched at eye level with lovely spring green Tamaracks for background.

A controversial pick to be sure. But I like the painterly quality of the final image created by super saturating in Photoshop. It was taken on a blaaaah gray day with blaaaah subjects. I slowed the shutter speed down to show the chaos of the fighting gulls. Lemons from lemonade shot.

On our trip to Teddy Roosevelt in October, Ryan and I spent quite a bit of time with the resident Black-tailed Prairie Dogs. My goal was to capture an image of their explosive warning call—they throw their head back and yip—and it only lasts a split second. Yes, I should have lit the dark side of the face with some fill flash but it is still one of my faves. These guys have real personality.

I picked this juvenile Parasitic Jaeger photo because it represents a week of fun and fellowship on Wisconsin Point this fall. Jaegers are birds of the Arctic and are rather rare on Lake Superior; and when they are seen, they are usually far out on the water chasing gulls. This October several jaegers were putting on quite a show and birders came from all over MN and WI to witness the spectacle. This bird was thought by all of us to be a Pomarine Jaeger, an extremely rare species. But this image proved that it was indeed a juvenile Parasitic and not a Pomarine. I sent it to experts in America and Europe. Nevertheless it was great fun watching these acrobatic scavengers harass the gulls until they vomited up their last meal.

My wife’s parents live in northwest Illinois and we get down there a couple times each year. On this summer trip I wanted to visit some restored tallgrass prairies. This image was taken during the peak wildflower bloom from near ground level in order to accentuate the dramatic sky and the height of the forbs (some over six feet!). A 2-stop graduated ND filter held the sky in check but I also ran the image through Photomatix to create an HDR image. I like the slightly surreal look of this image.

I don’t know…I just like the symmetry of this Mule Deer portrait, the head-on view, and the huge rack. Plus it is memories of a great trip to Teddy Roosevelt National Park and stalking this guy over a few hills in the early morning of a beautiful fall day.

I’m glad I left a little space around this hunting Ermine (the winter form of the Short-tailed Weasel and Long-tailed Weasel)…I like the composition. Not that I thought about it as I quickly jumped out of the car when I saw this little guy, squeaking to catch his attention, laying belly-down on the snow-covered dirt road and frantically firing of frames. To me, it is always exciting to just run across a wild animal who is just busy being an animal…in this case hunting small rodents. I’d never photographed an Ermine before (nor the summer form) so it was a doubly exciting event.

A sentimental choice. I took hundreds (thousands?) of ‘kid pix’ this year, but this one means alot to me. It sums up the personality of Birk Anders…a little boy full of energy, character, curiosity, and wanderlust (not always a good thing in a two-year old!) but his enthusiasm about all things natural and his absorption of information keeps his old man young too. Birk and I have gone on many short trips to “look for animals.” This was at Hawk Ridge in Duluth.

December 27th, 2010 Fillmore County near Spring Valley, Minnesota.

An inch of hoar frost covering every trunk, branch and twig turns this old barn, silo and windmill into a wondrous winter landscape.