Sparky sleeps in a bit but spends this late March day wandering around Northeast Minnesota in search of birds, and he finds some good ones! The day starts off with a noisy mixed flock of Trumpeter Swans and Canada Geese at the open water on the St. Louis River only minutes from his home. The cacophony of sound is in itself worth the trip. It is only 13º F but the birds don’t care.

Moving north to the Superior National Forest, Sparky seeks out Spruce Grouse and Canada Lynx…but neither can be found. One of his favorite forest roads is still clogged with snow so inaccessible. But he finds a migrating meadowlark feeding along the paved road (the only snow-free spot around). After examining some still photos he believes it is a Western Meadowlark. The only other migrant (or bird of any kind) is a newly-arrived Red-tailed Hawk.

Then Sparky remembers that he has not yet gone to find the Black-backed Woodpecker “party” in the burn from the previous spring’s big Camp House forest fire near Brimson, Minnesota. Two of his birding friends tallied 49(!!) Black-backeds in the massive burn a couple months ago, then another friend found 10 only the week before.

On the third stop in burned pines, both a male and female are found. They are so busy searching out beetle grubs that they allow close approach. A few miles on near the intersection of Hyppo Creek Rd and Indian Creek Road there are FOUR more Black-backeds! Three males and one female. A below-eye-level male obligingly pulls out several huge juicy longhorned beetle grubs from the burned pines. You can see the extraction process in all its glory in 4x slow motion.

Both a Ruffed Grouse and American Woodcock are flushed from the snowy woods.

Last stop is Agate Bay in Two Harbors on Lake Superior where there has been reports of a White-winged Scoter. And after only a few minutes of scanning the female duck is found. The scoter is not a super-rarity but not a common bird either. I see one maybe every third year in northern Minnesota.

Lastly a River Otter makes a brief appearance as it swims to shore off of Lake Superior.

And, most importantly, Sparky makes it home for dinner!

In August 2025 Sparky and his friend Paul joined birding legend Paul Lehman and the Buena Vista Audubon group on a pelagic birding trip out of San Diego. It was a beautiful day out on the Pacific with many cool birds and a few sea mammals.

Sparky avoids seasickness again with the pre-trip use of Dramamine and the day-of ingestion of ginger pills and ginger ale. He also uses pressure-point wrist straps. Who really knows if any of this works since he’s never actually been seasick.

Highlights included Flesh-footed Shearwater, Townsend’s Storm-Petrel, Long-tailed Jaeger, Cocos Booby, Sabine’s Gull, Arctic Tern, Marbled Godwit, Leach’s Storm-Petrel, Black-vented Shearwater and much more.

In between birds, Sparky meets many interesting fellow birders and photographers. A great day on the high seas!

January 17, 2026

Birding Newfoundland Canada in midwinter is not a picnic. High winds, driving rain, below freezing temps and even colder windchills should be expected. But the birds are amazing! After getting EIGHT Lifers in three days, I decided to do a little more leisurely “sightseeing” by driving the 187-mile Irish Loop.

Newfoundland’s Irish Loop winds around the rugged tundra of the massive Avalon Wilderness Reserve. It starts and ends in St. John’s but in between it goes through about every coastal town. I saw far more birds than people or cars on this January day.

The scenery along the coast was spectacular with massive 15-foot waves pounding the beaches. Not great for birding, but made for a memorable experience.

Bird highlights included a very confiding Long-tailed Duck, a large flock of Redpolls (with a few “Hoarys” mixed in), a very close Black Guillemot, Great Black-backed Gulls, adult Glaucous Gull, Northern Harrier, and my first ever winter-plumaged Willow Ptarmigan(!) (which I first thought was yet another patch of lingering snow).

As far as mammals, I finally found a small band of Woodland Caribou, but they were far off on the tundra. I stumbled a quarter mile in the half frozen hummocks of moss and Caribou Lichen against a 35-45mph headwind, but my wet feet and frozen face sent me back to the shelter of the car.

All in all, a great way to end my four days of “Birding the Rock”!

***If you need a guide, or a custom birding itinerary, I highly recommend Jared Clarke of birdtherock.com

In Part 1 from Churchill on Hudson Bay…

My wife Bridget gave me some money for Father’s Day a few years ago to finally go see a Polar Bear. I think she was sick of my whining that I’d never seen one on my June trips to photograph birds up in Churchill.

But it wasn’t enough money.

So I saved up and went in mid September 2025. 

I went just on my own, rented a truck and drove around the limited road network outside of Churchill Manitoba on Hudson Bay.

You see the Polar Bears congregate here to wait for the sea ice to freeze so they can get on with doing what they love…Hunt seals from the ice! 

Well, it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. But soon after foolishly getting stuck in the sand right in the middle of a known Polar Bear area, I did actually spot a speck of white that was NOT a pale-colored rock or old mattress,  It actually had fur!

This was the first of four Polar Bear sightings…one each day. And I think they were all the same bear! I named him Larry. Larry the Polar Bear.

One encounter stood out above the rest; mainly because he came to me! And quite close!

With binoculars and camera, Sparky heads off to beautiful Box Canyon in southeast Arizona. Only a few miles from the world-famous Madera Canyon, Box Canyon hosts some dry hillside species that are rare in most of this area. In fact, a cooperative and bold Five-striped Sparrow perches nicely for Sparky right off the rugged road that traverses Box Canyon.

Sparky also finds a nest of a pair of animated Thick-billed Kingbirds, but one of the babies is not quite ready to fledge.

Walking a random wash in the canyon leads to a close-up encounter with a Varied Bunting. Multiple evenings were spent with new friends listening for the CODE 3 Buff-collared Nightjar. This would be a Lifer…but did Sparky hear it? You’ll have to watch to see.

One stormy night yields a friendly Tarantula, and a 3-foot Black-tailed Rattlesnake sporting its lovely green scales.

In this third episode of Birding & Bird Photography from southeast Arizona, I head 2 miles into a remote canyon to find a rare warbler from Mexico.

Sycamore Canyon off the rugged Ruby Road is an out-of-the-way birding location just a few miles from the Mexican border. It is a common immigrant route for those fleeing Mexico, and signs were everywhere. A Border Patrol helicopter suddenly appeared over the canyon wall and zipped right overhead. I guess the fact that I was carrying a camera, and was headed in the “wrong” direction signaled that I was just a crazy birder and not an illegal migrant.

I meet Connor and Alex on the way in. A day earlier they had helped me with info about the Berylline Hummingbird at Santa Rita Lodge, and once again they provide me with valuable info on finding another rare bird.

This time it was the Rufous-capped Warbler, a “code 3” rarity from Mexico. It is seen nearly every year somewhere in SE Arizona or Texas but usually only one or two birds. In fact, between 1993 and 2025 it was only not found in the U.S. in 1997.

After getting turned around and backtracking, I eventually find the warbler. It is a real stunner, and looks more like a Chat than a wood warbler. I enjoy some brief looks as it forages in the shrubs and small trees in the canyon.

Other highlights include a Black Vulture (small SE AZ population), Rock Wren, several Canyon Wrens (nice! I rarely have seen), singing Rufous-crowned Sparrows, Hepatic Tanager, and Western Tanager.

Herps included a brief look at a Black-necked Garter Snake, and photos of Clark’s Spiny Lizards, and Elegant Earless Lizard.

I find a DOR (dead-on-road) lifer Hog-nosed Skunk on Ruby Road.

Sycamore is a very remote canyon, and there a few things every visitor should know:

–The road in is rugged but drivable by a rental car

–The “trail” in the canyon is undeveloped at best, and it is very easy to lose the route.

–Must bring plenty of water, sunscreen, hat, etc.

–No cell service! So make sure you have a compass or other ways to navigate.

–Trail is rocky but flat. Easy in places, but tough in others.

–After about 1.8 miles the route is blocked by a cliff and a small waterfall and ledge. It takes some real scrambling to make it around this point (I did it but I was a bit turned around and had already gone past the warbler location)

In this episode of Shooting with Sparky, he goes out to the Minnesota-South Dakota border to try and photograph shorebirds, grebes and ducks by kayak. Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area is Minnesota’s ONLY alkaline (salty) lake. Due to the alkaline nature, it breeds millions of brine flies and brine shrimp, which the grebes, phalaropes and other shorebirds love to feast on.

But first Sparky birds Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge where TWO Say’s Phoebes had been reported, a western bird that is rarely seen in Minnesota. Sparky finds both and has some great photo opportunites.

He also enjoys a patch of Prickly Pear Cactus (Did you know Minnesota has cactus? THREE species!). Other Big Stone highlights include the aerial flight of Common Nighthawks, singing (croaking?) Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Clay-colored Sparrow, and a acrobatic pair of Painted Turtles! [Sparky also gets a lifer jumping spider! (Marpissa pikei…Pike’s Slender Jumper) but it didn’t make it into the final cut :(]

On to Salt Lake! And the major revelation of this trip was that shorebirds don’t recognize a human in a kayak! Sparky was able to float right up to foraging Dunlin, Semipalmated Plovers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Pectoral Sandpipers, and Sanderlings. But the best photo opportunities were with the foraging Wilson’s and Red-necked Phalaropes, two stunning species that are shorebirds but don’t feed like them. They swim like a duck, plucking brine shrimp or brine fly larvae from the lake.

And in another interesting turn, they suddenly all started going into hyper courtship mode. In phalaropes the female is more colorful than the male, and she initiates courtship, battling with other females for the more drab male as a mate. After she lays eggs in a nest, she flies off and the male is left to incubate the eggs and take care of the young. Fascinating!

Warbler Wednesdays in Sax-Zim Bog are a many-year tradition. These field trips often yield fantastic looks at some of northern Minnesota’s 25+ species of breeding and migrant warblers.

Sparky highlights some of the finds on two Warbler Wednesdays including Canada, Black-throated Green, Blackburnian, Pine, Magnolia, Mourning and Golden-winged warblers to name a few.

We also check in on spring highlights of our Friends of Sax-Zim Bog trail camera project, “A Year in the Life at a Sax-Zim Beaver Pond.” Meet Hank and Ginger the Timber Wolf pair that make this part of the Bog their home. Also a surprise cameo by a mom Black Bear with THREE bundles of joy.

Sparky encounters Larry and Patty from Maine along Taiga Boardwalk, and we hear about their exciting Sax-Zim Bog trip.

Then as Sparky is wrapping up the day, a TRIO of MOOSE (!) wander across his path.

What a beautiful mid May morning in the North Woods of Wisconsin! Ryan and Sparky take their FLOATING BLINDS out to a nearby marsh to see what they can find. 

Ryan gets some COOL creative shots of a pair of Common Loons and Trumpeter Swans. 

Sparky is one pond over in his leaky waders under the canopy of his floating blind searching for marsh birds. Instantly flooded with mucky marsh water, Sparky presses on. Surprisingly, he finds several species that are more common further south—MARSH WREN, VIRGINIA RAIL, YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD, GREEN HERON.

An AMERICAN BITTERN is calling only 15 feet from Sparky…but he can’t find it…until he does find it! Always a red-letter day when one gets to see this skulky species.

Sparky also gets video and photos of Blue-winged Teal, Trumpeter Swans.

Ryan made these blinds based on the awesome design of MrJanGear floating hides. You can purchase these readymade at http://www.mrjangear.com.

You can see more of Ryan’s photos on Instagram at #ryan.marshik

Sparky’s Instagram is #Sparky_Stensaas

Night is as unexplored as the Furthest Wilds, and in this episode we dive headlong into this fascinating time of day at a fascinating time of year. On May 3 we join Head Naturalist Clinton on his Things that Go Buzz, Croak, Hoot & Bump in the Night field trip in northeastern Minnesota’s Sax-Zim Bog.

Beginning birder Evelyn flips over a log and finds a Blue-spotted Salamander! We also catch adorable tiny Spring Peepers and cold-impervious Wood Frogs. A late Rough-legged Hawk sits and poses for us.

Join us as we explore Gray Jay Way on a still evening. White-throated Sparrows have returned in force, and they are singing their territorial song “Old Sven Pederson Pederson Pederson!” (that’s what they sing in Minnesota anyway!).

We get updates from Sparky on Friends of Sax-Zim Bog’s Artist-in-Residence Program, find out about our Bog Buddy Blake’s new YouTube channel, and updates on some upcoming platform construction projects in the Bog.

Also…drumroll please….Who found the best piece of garbage during our April 24th litter clean up?? The tension is palpable! Hint: What do Bob Ross and Sponge Bob have in common?

Come along and join us for the fun!

http://www.saxzim.org