After dropping Birk off at the Minneapolis airport for his senior trip to Washington DC, I decide to take a detour on my way home to northern Minnesota. This is my favorite “long cut” to Wrenshall, and avoids a couple hours of freeway driving.

Crex Meadows is one of Wisconsin’s premiere State Wildlife Areas, and is most famous for being a major staging area for Sandhill Cranes in late fall.

It was too early for returning cranes since the marshy lakes were still frozen, but that doesn’t deter Trumpeter Swans! They return crazy early just to get the best nesting spots.

And that is what stopped me along a dirt road in the refuge. A pair of Trumpeters on a snowy point surrounded by slushy blue ice in perfect light. And as I was photographing them, an adult Bald Eagle flew right at me and landed a hundred feet away. That doesn’t happen every day!

The Eagle “caught” (really plucked) a couple dead winter-kill Bullheads from the slush. Interestingly, it seemed to prefer the skin of the fish, and stripped that first. That is one of the fattier and more nutrient-rich parts of any fish.

Other bird highlights included a small flock of Redpolls, American Tree Sparrow, Ring-necked Pheasant and Wild Turkeys.

A near-miss possible lowlight was almost getting stuck in the mucky, muddy roads THREE times! But I barely made it out.

A Serendipitous day of birding and bird photography!

I drive over the bridge that spans the St. Louis River at Fond du Lac nearly every day…And the scene is rarely the same. And this day was no exception. With temps in the 60s and even 70s recently, the snow has melted and the river is opening up. And when the river opens up, the migrant birds appear instantly. Often my first spring Robin, Red-winged Blackbird, Northern Flicker, Common Merganser, Hooded Merganser, and Trumpeter Swans are seen/heard from the bridge. On this day, dense fogs created a dreamscape of gray and white. The silhouetted trees and islands really make the shot. I like the shape of the sweeping horizontal limbs on the right. It took many shots to get both Trumpeter Swans with their heads up since they feed almost constantly, heads submerged. I also like the 3 Canada Geese just loafing on the “iceberg.” I tweaked the color balance to the blue side to add a bit of a feeling of winter turning to spring. Moody!

[Note: This image looks better the larger it is, so click on it once to see a larger image, then click again to see it at its max size.]

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens, tripod