It Begins (Big Douglas MN 10K 2019)

5AM New Years Day and the last of my gear and snacks are in the car and I'm about to head for Olmsted County. I didn't plan for this to be my start at all. I was talked out of my original plan (St. Louis County) by well reasoned logic from Clinton Nienhaus around perhaps waiting until some additional winter specialty birds show up in the bog area in greater numbers. My second plan, which was fully vetted and ready to rock thanks to input support from Liz Harper was also abandoned for a week due to the Rothsay area projected to be near -20 on New Years morning.

So in what I assume will need to be one of my best qualities for the year I adapted to the situation and found day time highs around 15 in the SE portion of the state to be the most viable destination.

I worked out several potential routes and ultimately wanted to include Olmsted simply because it was on the way down more than the way back for what I had planned and Quarry Hill Nature Center has a decent feeder setup. This time of year a good feed station can net you a hefty chunk of your day birds for a county without needing to grind very much. 14 species in this case with key gets of Brown Creeper, Pine Siskin, and White-throated Sparrow. Only the sparrow would be likely or easy in a follow-up effort and my goal for these January efforts is to try and secure a handful of tougher winter only or limited window birds for each county.

By 8:30 I was out of the county heading to another feed station. Whitewater State Park has a great setup you can view from inside and from 2018 experience you can do pretty well at also. Sure enough I secured my Winona Purple Finch, Pine Siskin, and Red-breasted Nuthatch along with another bevy of White-throated Sparrows. 15 species on this list helped ease the days efforts as I knew it would be thinner as I drove 4 counties looking for open water and random species.

Much of the day revolved around picking up chaff birds that would be gettable at any time of year, but I have to get them sometime so maybe winter ends up being my chance to ease the burden of a future trip and not get stuck grinding for a House Sparrow.

I still had spots left I wanted to visit as the day expired with sunlight around the Frontenac area in Goodhue county, but my core desire was Wabasha, Winona, Houston, and Olmsted and I did get 16 to 22 species in each of those 4 so it was a solid day. I'm mostly writing this to remind myself of what I learned on my days out and what I could do better.

• Issue to Resolve: Phone charging was a minor issue as I was constantly draining battery as I use my phone for navigation, eBird, and several other tools. This morning (1/2) I bought a couple faster chargers for the cars so that maybe phone recharge during drive time will be faster.
  
• Issue to Resolve: Hitting areas in bluff country that dropped Internet were a minor issue and I can see them adding up over time. I can't afford for my entire 9,000+ Google MyMap to be down when out of internet so I'll need to work out a proper solution for that data to be available. I'm aware of some app options that I can use to pull down Google MyMaps and then load that data into another app or into a Garmin device I'd need to buy. Definitely something to solve soon so I don't get into the remote areas and end up with no map data to go off of.

• Mistakes Made: I didn't trek far enough down in Houston to touch the Reno Bottoms area and it was probably the reason I didn't check off American Tree Sparrow in the county and a few other birds like Common Goldeneye. I needed to do a better job of on the fly calling a location like that out and making sure I visit.
• Mistakes Made: As time ran thinner I kept pushing north faster and ended up skipping past a really good looking pine stand near Kellogg-Weaver Dunes that should have been investigated for Wabasha finches. As it is I didn't get Siskin, P Finch, or RB Nut and perhaps should have been able to wrestle up one of them at least in a space like that.  
• Things I Learned: You can't do everything. I got lucky in Houston spotting a flying Horned Lark that I pulled over to id and seeing a flock of 10. That made me think about ag routes and the fact that I don't have enough time to hit everything in a single county in a day if I'm also going to grind out 3 more counties in the process. For the early stages I think I'm landing on the idea of getting a good base of birds with some focus on winter finch migrants and open water birds. My options really are to cover a county with a few spots and pick up 15 to 25 species in about 4 counties or Just hit 1 or 2 counties and grind out 25 to 35 species. The math of what is the right thing to do is a question I haven't yet answered. Maybe it is a changing landscape throughout the year.

Hot Spots Touched:

1. Silver Lake (Olmsted) - Almost no open water and just Canada Geese.
2. Quarry Hill Nature Center (Olmsted) - Good feeder action a good visit point.
3. Whitewater State Park (Winona) - Great feeder action. Hikes are good, but I didn't take any.
4. Wiscoy Valley Area (Winona) - Just a valley I heard about online that had Golden Eagle potential, but my good raptors were Bald Eagle and Red-tailed Hawk.
5. Houston Nature Center (Houston) - Spur of the moment stop and had nothing happening. They had 1 feeder at the front door and no birds. 
6. Beaver Creek Valley SP (Houston) - I had hopes for the open water to be a draw, but I found a pair of Bald Eagle and that was it. Place was a bird dead zone.
7. Brownsville Overlooks (Houston) - South overlook had a small spot of open water with Trumpeter Swans. Note house across the road on the bluff side has good feeders and feeder birds. This place is a mini-feed station for birds and worth a winter stop. North overlook was dead.
8. Wildcat Landing (Houston) - A few Common Mergs and the more highway adjacent spring feed area had Kingfisher, but I couldn't see any shorebirds that historically overwinter. Viewing for that is roadside of the highway near some mailboxes and is a bit dangerous. Probably not worth it for a couple shorebirds that can be picked up in spring.
9. Great River Bluffs SP (Winona) - Winter is limited in this park as the trials convert to X-ski, but low snow pack opens it up. Drive in was good with Northern Shrike and the pine row near the King's Bluff hike was loaded with RB Nut. No Crossbills, but you can tell why they had stopped at the place for a while.
10. Lock Dam 5 (Winona) - Just some Merg action. The small feeder setup over the fence near the office was empty.
11. Reads Landing (Wabasha) - Along with some random stops along the way for viewing this area was a bit choked with ice flows. Some feeder action, but the day was running out. This place is probably better at first light with a few houses running feed stations. The water had many Eagles around and dozens of Common Mergs flying up river to a nighttime area I would later find to be Lake Pepin East. (1500 of them)
12. Lake City Marina (Wabasha) - Remaining open water was the size of a swimming pool at the breakwater exit to Lake Pepin. Only Mallards were present, was hoping for a bonus Black Duck, but no luck.

The river presented a lot of overlook spots that could be good stops in these counties and I suspect that is the easy method for also randomly picking up Tufted Titmouse such as I did in Houston on the Brownsville South Overlook.