December 8-14, 2024

The long, slow drip of winter finally picked up momentum, with a much-needed addition of 4-6 inches of perfect snow at the end of the week.

Week in Review

The week began with a glorious sunny day after a night so cold that Big Twin Lake went from having no ice to being completely frozen in a single evening.

After many gray days the sun was a welcome sight, but by the next day the weather quickly shifted as brooding clouds swept in from the west in advance of the storm that arrived at the end of the week.

Although some lakes are frozen over, ducks can still be easily observed in open waters along the river or at other lakes such as Pearrygin Lake. This week I was seeing good numbers of mallards, common goldeneyes, hooded mergansers, and common mergansers.

I also spent some time observing the behavior of hunting birds this week, and I noticed that, in one way or another, they were all doing the same thing: sitting quietly in hidden spots and either watching or waiting. In the winter, it's easy to burn too many calories hunting for elusive prey animals with very little success, so it seems like the best strategy is to remain hidden and still, while conserving calories and keeping an eye open for something to catch.

Again, this has been a fantastic winter for owls. For example, it's been three years since I've seen a northern pygmy-owl, but I've already seen three this winter in three very different locations. Pygmy-owls are very active daytime hunters, so unlike other hunting birds they often sit on conspicuous branches and move frequently between perches.

Observation of the Week: Northern Shrike

Speaking of songbirds and hunting birds, there's no better example of the intersection between these two groups than shrikes. Shrikes are songbirds (closely related to vireos) that hunt down small animals ranging from insects and mice to other birds.

Shrikes are often described as raptors because they rip apart their food with hooked beaks like a hawk or owl. But shrikes lack the claws and strong feet that a raptor uses to hold its food while it eats, so shrikes solve this problem by impaling their food on thorny bushes or barbed wire fences and using the thorn to hold their food as they pull off bites.

Northern shrikes are truly birds of the north that breed across the far northern reaches of Canada and Alaska. In the winter they wander south, and depending on the year, you are likely to see at least a couple over the course of the winter.