General Birding:
Including tonight I've had short outings recently after work before it gets to dark. Last night with a family birthday to attend I checked out a gull spot near Stillwater and found it to be a wind blown beast coming out of the north right down the St. Croix River. Undaunted I reached the furthest point of a sandbar and found a large raft of gulls bobbing up and down on the river all pointed head first into the wind. It was apparent that roughly 200 Ring-billed Gulls really don't care about cold and wind while sitting in 33 degree water.
I dutifully scanned the entire group and found one man-child of a juvenile Herring Gull (below) sitting amongst them looking out of place as it regularly would lift a foot or two off the water and plunge head first looking to snag an easy bait fish. This location presents warm water outflow from the nearby power plant and the gulls all seemed to be setup on the transition point between the cold river water and the relatively warm outflow water. (Perhaps because the same is true of the fish?)
Additionally a few Common Goldeneye were making the rounds as a large flock of Mallards worked the shallows. Nothing revolutionary, but the effort for me is one aimed at exploring deeper the potential in gull haunts at this time of year and looking to get a feel for when the Ring-billed Gulls fully exit south and what heartier northern gulls fill in behind them. I have historically been a rather limited winter birder, but with the big year in Washington County on going I've been keen to use it as a learning experience in all facets of skillset.
Working from home today I immediately went north after work and tried to tap the vein that is Big Marine Park and Lake yet again. I found the lake opened fully up, but scant few birds on the water. (1 Common Loon, 1 Common Merganser) Perhaps duck hunting during the morning and day time limited the ducks appetite for hanging around this generally very productive body of water. With time to spare I found myself on a hike hoping for something fun and soon found a foraging flock of Common Redpoll (25) at the tops of a few Birch Trees. Limited numbers are this far south right now, but I have found Redpoll 3 times now and it's fun to soak in such a bird since they don't always irrupt this far south.
2018 Big Year Planning:
Last night I worked up my list of park locations with Fire Towers, Waterfalls, and special scenic views. (Though I found the last list to be lacking on the DNR website as I didn't see anything listed for Split Rock Lighthouse SP or Tettegouche SP, and I know them both to have amazing views of the lake shore that should easily make the list of views not to be missed.)
I'm attempting to weave in these additional sights or activities to my birding focused efforts so they add to the experience and adventure of it all.
I've started to think about some of my tech device stack that will be coming with me on these outings and I'll need to work on a few bits before the new year and have them squared away.
Phone Apps: It would be good for metrics to make sure I've got a better GPS tracking app that can give me accurate distance measures of areas hiked. The eBird app has added this feature on Android, but I've found it to be way to aggressive in distance and often providing a reading of 4 miles when I know for a fact the distance covered was only 1.5 or 2. Shouldn't be to hard to track down something, though I do wish Google hadn't deprecated their Google Tracks as that worked perfect and even synced to your Google Cloud account.
Phone Power: Given some of my goals I'm wondering if I need to track down a battery piggyback of some kind that can give me extended juice for long hikes and outings away from the car. My Samsung Galaxy S7 is limited due to having an internal battery, something that irritates me a bit as prior versions allowed battery swapping.
Video: I'm still debating heavily if I want to go after a GoPro Camera and record video segments on these adventures and pull together a YouTube channel that could accompany this big year. My desires probably outweigh my actual ability to put everything into this big year, but I do like the notion of going that deep in the tank for content to provide a unique perspective on such a year.
Camera: I suppose it is possible I could just record video segments on my Nikon P900 and use those for any type of situation where I want to provide additional content for the experience. That would be more deliberate and hand held though and limit birding efforts over a GoPro that would be head mounted. I should probably stay clear of the GoPro though as I'm already a walking ad for Cabela's with my gear, optics, and electronics on me while birding.
So much to think about. Must remember to enjoy the ride and find adventure at every corner.
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