Every October a fair number of Golden Eagles drift down our way from breeding grounds in the Canadian tundra and the shores of Hudson Bay. Hawk Ridge in Duluth, Minnesota is a great place to see them on strong northwest wind days following a cold front in October and November. And some even winter in the bluff country of southeast Minnesota/southwest Wisconsin. Here is some slow motion video taken on October 20, 21 at 180 frames per second with a Panasonic GH5 and Sigma 50-500mm lens; handheld; manual focusing.

NORTHERN GOSHAWKS in super slow motion flight. Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth: October 16, 19, and 20, 2018. Adults and juveniles. Love seeing these strong solid accipiters in flight. Note bulging crops on a couple of these birds. The bigger females prey on Snowshoe Hares and Ruffed Grouse. The smaller males stick mostly to Ruffed Grouse and probably Red Squirrels and woodpeckers. Click on the gear icon if you want to view at a higher resolution. [Panasonic GH5 and Sigma 50-500mm lens; shooting at 180 frames per second]

[Continued from previous post]…There have been no Snowies in the Sax-Zim Bog this year so Dave and I headed to the urban “wilds” of Superior, Wisconsin (Duluth’s neighbor in the “Twin Ports”). We found two Snowies but they were not equally photogenic. One had been banded and painted by researchers so it could be identified from long distances. We got a few “insurance shots” and continued our search.

Snowy Owls have been wintering in the industrial areas of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin for many years. When I was in college at the University of Minnesota Duluth in the early/mid 1980s, we would go down to the Port Terminal in the harbor (where all the warehouses and shipping docks were) and we could easily find a half dozen. There were probably a couple dozen wintering between there and Superior’s docks.

At that time, the harbor was a brushy mess crisscrossed by railroad tracks and dotted with junk piles and open garbage cans. It was the perfect environment for rabbits, pigeons, pheasants and rats…all great Snowy Owl food.
[All owl-in-flight shots taken with Canon 7D and Canon 400mm f5.6 lens set at Shutter Priority 1/1250 second and auto ISO. ISO ranged from 640 to 800 and f-stop ranged from f5.6 to f8]

Less than a mile away, we found this stunning female/young male (You can’t really tell, but in general, the darker the bird the younger it is and more likely a female). Don’t get me wrong, I love the nearly pure white adult males, but the speckled patterning on this bird was very pleasing.

Of course she sat on every ugly perch she could find…telephone pole, chain-link fence, scoreboard (see below). So we waited until she pooped. Why?, you might ask. Raptors always seem to “jettison” excess waste which is weight they don’t need to carry with them when they fly. Then she did and I held down the finger on my Canon 7D with the Canon 400mm f5.6 set to AI focus so the lens would continue to focus on the flying bird.

I couldn’t resist a little fun when I saw this Snowy land on the middle school’s baseball scoreboard. After all, she is a “guest from the tundra,” just with us for the winter!