Sparky heads back to western Minnesota with his kayak in hopes of duplicating his success at Salt Lake last June. But strong winds and gray skies make Day One challenging to say the least! But he finds the rare but continuing Black-necked Stilt at Lac Qui Parle County’s Hantho WMA along with dozens of Hudsonian Godwits!

A quick drive along the unexpectedly burned Big Stone NWR Auto Loop turns up a wary flock of American Golden-Plovers and a couple Black-bellied Plovers.

Day Two dawns clear and calm so Sparky races to Salt Lake to launch his kayak. Winds are already increasing and high water has covered last year’s fruitful sandspit. But one sandy point remains and it yields a flock of Franklin’s Gulls, one Forster’s Tern and a smattering of shorebirds. An “offshore” Marbled Godwit also poses.

And as usual, the shorebirds pay little attention to the human in the red boat pulled up on “their” shore. A Sanderling bathes just feet away…A lone Ruddy Turnstone walks past me several times.

A grand total of EIGHTEEN species of shorebirds were seen (and most photographed) even though this wasn’t the goal of the trip.

Seven inches of “Easter snow” motivates Sparky to get out to western parts of his home county…Carlton County, Minnesota…to find out how the migrant birds are handling this cold spring day.

Loads of Rough-legged Hawks are migrating back north to nest on the Canadian tundra. They winter in open areas of northern U.S and southern Canada where snow cover allows them to see voles. Snows are usually too deep in northern Minnesota for them to spend the whole winter. Mostly males are found today.

Early migrants like American Kestrels, Hooded Mergansers, Mallards and Canada Geese are used to dealing with spring snows, but a surprise group of 3 Killdeer are less equipped to handle it. But they seem in good spirits as they forage along snow-covered roads.

Multiple Ring-necked Pheasants are a surprise at Firebird WMA. Are they being stocked? This was formerly a stronghold of Sharp-tailed Grouse.

The most fascinating find of the day was an industrious pair of Sandhill Cranes using their beaks to “shovel” snow and probe in the softer spots of ground under a grove of oaks to find acorns! Omnivorous and opportunistic, cranes aren’t too bothered by a little snow.

The two-hour excursion ends with a stop at TJ’s in Mahtowa for a bratwurst….Their brats are de “wurst”!

In Part 2 of Sparky’s January birding trip to Canada’s island of Newfoundland he discovers that European gulls and ducks dominate the highlight birds. Bird guide Jared Clarke (birdtherock.com) and Sparky make multiple trips to St. John’s Quidi Vidi Lake and find European species such as 35(!) Eurasian Wigeon, multiple Tufted Ducks, two Black-headed Gulls and the very rare Common Gull.

Two adorable pocket-sized Dovekies just feet from the shore at Flatrock provide for some good pelagic bird entertainment…and even cooperate for some flash photography!

Sparky adds three ABA Lifers (Dovekie (#672), Common Gull (#673), Black-headed Gull (#674)) and gets his best photos ever of Iceland Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Black-headed Gull and Great Black-backed Gull.

Music by Shanneyganock (shanneyganock.com). Song is called “Newfoundland” and is available on Spotify.

Virtually Live 57 S6E2

Roll that beautiful owl footage! Sparky shares his favorite video clips of owls he found in early 2025. Highlights include a pirouetting Boreal, Great Gray pouncing. Between January and March 2025 an irruption of northern owls flooded into northern Minnesota; dozens of Boreal Owls, hundreds of Great Gray Owls and a couple Northern Hawk Owls were seen. The bulk of observations were from south of Duluth, Sax-Zim Bog, Two Harbors area, Lake County, Superior National Forest to Grand Marais.

July 4, 2025

My Great Grandfather Anders Stensaas came from the Melhus/Kvål area of central Norway in the early 1900s and settled near Vermillion, South Dakota. After a few years, he went back to Norway to marry the girl from the neighboring farm, Anna Rofstad. Anna’s father Ivar was distraught and angry that Anders had taken his daughter away. It is hard to fathom these days how far Norway and South Dakota really were in the early 1900s; no planes, no phones, only a slow boat from Oslo and a long train ride to the prairie. Letters were his only connection to his daughter.

In the early 1930s, Anders and Anna (now Americanized to “Andrew and Anne”), returned to Melhus and had a homecoming with her father. They all made peace, and he soon died at age 99.

Our connection to our Norwegian family has always been through Anna’s family, the Rofstad side. That’s just how it goes sometimes…Connections shift from maternal to paternal and back and forth over time.

My father was stationed in Germany in 1957-58 with the highly prestigious “U.S. Army Accounting Corp,” a fearsome, highly-trained….okay, okay, I’ll stop now. Dad was drafted after graduating from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and his main interest while stationed overseas was to see as much of the European continent as he could on Uncle Sam’s dime.

He made trips to Paris (Eiffel Tower, Louvre), London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Holland, a cruise down the Rhine River, skiing in the Swiss Alps, and even attended the World’s Fair in Brussels. And then he contacted his second cousin Gudrun (Rofstad) Moum in Vikhamar near Trondheim to see if he could visit. He had a great time with Gudrun and Hermann, and they visited the Rofstad family dairy farm (see photos).

Fast forward to 2025, and I thought it would be neat if the boys could see the ancestral homeland. I had been there multiple times in the past, Bridget and I even visited on our Honeymoon, so I told Jan that we’d just have a short “stand-up” visit. Well, that is nearly impossible when visiting relatives in Norway!

The short “stand-up” visit went out the window when the phrase, “Why don’t we go in and have some coffee,” was offered. And the photo albums came out, and then here came the cakes. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it!

But almost none of the farm Rofstad relatives spoke English very well, but thankfully Jan, Liv and Anders did a lot of translating for us. Did I mention that there was cake(!) and more coffee, and lots of stories. Good fun! But my Bjorn was so tired that he fell asleep on Bridget’s shoulder.

Eventually the gathering migrated to the local Lutheran Church in Melhus where I thought we might see the gravestones of our common ancestor Ivar Rofstad (both Jan’s and My Great Great Grandfather). I had seen the grave marker on a trip in the 1980s and wanted to find it again. But I was told that after a gravestone had been in place for 20 years, the family must pay a maintenance fee for it to remain in the cemetery. And if they don’t pay, another, newer, gravestone is put in its place. This seems downright crazy to me, but then again, in the U.S. we don’t have many centuries of dead people in graveyards, and we have lots of space to make cemeteries bigger and bigger.

Long story, short…we couldn’t find his grave. But I did see the marker for Ingebrigt Rofstad. Such a nice man! I had met him here in 1986 I believe.

The current church itself dates to 1892 and is an impressive and imposing stone house of worship that holds 500 congregants. I could hear organ music coming from inside but did not go in.

Historically on this spot was the Medieval Church completed in 1190AD. It was torn down by Royal decree in the late 1800s to make room for the new church. But they did re-use some parts, including the portal. And in 1999 restorers found actual runic carvings in the portal. The best interpretation is “sea priest” or “male goat priest” or “Hafr (the) priest.” The Runic alphabet basically went extinct by the 1400s, so this inscription predates that time.

Next—Off to the Viking capitol, TRONDHEIM

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 Part 1 of Sparky’s August trip to southeast Arizona, he concentrates on finding the mountain warblers and magnificent hummers of Tucson’s Mount Lemmon. Only a short drive from the city, but a world away as far as habitats, Mount Lemmon rises to over 9,000 feet where pine forests dominate. It is even high enough to get several feet of snow each winter and sustain a downhill skiing area! The mountain is an example of a “Sky Island,” one of several of these isolated mountains/mountain ranges rising up from the deserts of southeast Arizona. The 27 mile Santa Catalina Highway traverses multiple habitats/biomes and provides dozens of excellent birding locations.

The Palisades Visitor Center at 7,950 feet is a great stop to see hummingbirds up close. On this visit Sparky finds dozens of noisy Rufous Hummingbirds (including one single adult male in stunning coppery plumage), several red-throated “zinging” Black-chinneds and a few rosy-headed Anna’s. A magnificent Rivoli’s Hummer joins the party as well, showing off its iridescent purple and teal feathers.

Sparky shares a couple unique photography techniques to capture the beauty and speed of these unique hummingbirds. Shooting video at 1/5000 of a second frame rate can yield some stunning still images.

Then down at Rose Lake Canyon Sparky stumbles on a nice wave of Mountain Chickadees, Pygmy Nuthatches, and Bushtits. Amongst them are several high elevation “mountain” warblers at eye-level including Grace’s, Black-throated Gray, and a stunning Red-faced Warbler.

At the end of the video, Sparky shares his favorite images of this episode.

In the next episode (SE AZ Part 2) Sparky travels to Madera Canyon. Will he get his Lifer Berryline Hummingbird? And what is that strange mammal coming down the path?

Southeast Arizona Birding—August 10-16, 2025

In early August I brought Bjorn down to spend a week at his grandma’s farm in Illinois. But instead of making the 18-hour round trip drive twice in seven days, I instead flew from Peoria to Tucson for some monsoon season desert birding.

It was a bizarre pre-dawn drive on the rough Ruby Road to get to the remote Sycamore Canyon. The only cars that I saw were 7(!) Border Patrol trucks. Obviously this is a commonly used route for migrants. 

Connor and Alex, grad students at Texas A&M had arrived just before me, along with a couple Border Patrol agents on foot. They took off at a quick pace while I took my time along the trail…or maybe I should write “trail,” since it was often barely perceptible which way one should go. It is a fairly flat trail but the heat, lack of signage and uneven substrate make it a challenging journey.

Alex and Connor gave me a GPS location and a good habitat description on their way out, but Google Earth was not connecting in this remote valley and I overshot the spot. I knew it was like 1.75 miles int the canyon but I “overthunk” it and ended up doing some risky boulder scrambling to get around a steep dry waterfall slope and rock cliff.

Then suddenly a Border Patrol helicopter popped over the cliffs above and buzzed down the canyon and over my head. I know they are used to occasional birders so ignored me. Odd feeling to be in such a remote place all alone and have a helicopter check you out.

But I get it…this must be a well-used crossing point. I saw much sign of folks traveling through this canyon: abandoned canteen with home-sewn bluejean cover, tuna packets, random clothes, Red Cross blanket. 

Finally I turned around. It just didn’t feel like this was the spot Alex and Connor had described. They also said it was singing so I was listening for the song and its call chip note, which to me sounds like that of a Junco. After another sketchy rock scramble and a half mile hike back up down the canyon I heard the call note.

There it was! A male in all his glory…lemon yellow with a stout bill and namesake rufous cap. I got to spend a grand total of 37 seconds with him before he flitted off through the wash-side brush. ABA area lifer number 658! (or so…I need to redo my checklist).

Rufous-capped Warbler is a Mexican species that only rarely shows up in the U.S. and when it does, almost always in SE Arizona.

I plopped down on a rock on the hillside and just waited and watched for another 45 minutes or so, but the Rufous-capped did not show again. The Border Patrol agents did pass by but evidently did not see me only 20 yards away.

It was now getting quite hot. I met a few other die hards on their way in to find the warbler. I helped one young guy who had gotten off the trail and was a bit turned around (easy to do here!).

Other highlights: Rock Wrens, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, singing and close-up Canyon Wrens, Clark’s Spiny Lizard, Elegant Earless Lizard, and a very unexpected Black Vulture(!), an eastern species that I learned has a tiny outpost in SE Arizona including Sycamore Canyon. Also a sad but interesting find…Road-kill Hognosed Skunk.

**I am working on my YouTube videos about this Arizona trip, so stay tuned!