Tag Archives: birding

Tundra Swan Migration Enroute through Pool 8

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Tundra Swans are once again flowing south along the Mississippi River and can be seen by the hundreds from the Trempealeau Refuge area to south of Goose Island County Park (La Crosse, Wisconsin, Brownsville, Minnesota, to Stoddard, Wisconsin.) Be certain to keep your eyes open for ducks, pelicans, and occasionally, a pair of Trumpeter Swans.

Find much more detail about the Fall Migration and peak dates by typing “Tundra Swans” or “Trumpeter Swans” or “Pelicans” in the Search Box to the upper right of this Web Page!! You might also do a search of our EAGLE articles! We have been making notes about the spring and fall migration for nearly 20 years!

The Swans and Pelicans will be around until the bays and the main channel ice over. Then American Bald Eagles will begin gathering in quantities around any open water just below the Dams. It is a great time to meander along the river, view eagle nests, eagles, and our lovely little towns along the river. Bring your Binocs!

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May 2023 Updates

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What a difference a month makes! Temps are settling in the 40s one week, 70s next, and then back to 40s! Snow accumulates, then melts, then falls again. Our great Mississippi rises, then falls, then floods! Just now, the crest is slipping from La Crosse into Iowa, but hover close to moderate flood levels everywhere.

Many parks are still closed, but birds are still moving along the Mississippi River flyway. They are, however, moving in fits and starts along with inclimate weather and high water. Their one necessity is the availability of food along the route. With another round of nice weather approaching Wisconsin and Minnesota, birds should be back on the move!

Our Sandhill nest is full of activity as the eggs hatched on April 29 – about a week early. Eagles are busy with their own fledglings, so check out nests for the white heads of adults busy with bringing food to the nests. Egrets and Great Blue Herons have arrived and are visible in ponds and sloughs not directly on the flooded Mississippi River. White pelicans also are checking out the smaller wetland ponds along the flooded river. We see them frequently.

Riverboats, including the Twilight, the newly restored Julia Belle Swaine, and the La Crosse Queen are all eager to start their seasons “come hell or high water!”

I will be posting several links just to remind you of what you can find on our Mississippi River at this time of year, and also on greatriver.com While I no longer post daily, our archives are filled with seasonal information!! Use the Search Button above or search through our CATEGORIES! And Happy Spring!

Snow Flurries Still Fall, but Life is Abundant!

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This is just to let your know that while White Pelicans still abound, they are clustered up in tight pods wherever they can get out of the wind. Check your favorite Eagle nests…those I like to watch all still have adults in them, but I did have a report that during one of our sleet storms a nest was abandoned. No Tundra Swans, of course, but there are Trumpeters! Walked through Goose Island and many of our spring waterfowl are still here. Eagles are abundant, indeed. Sandhill Cranes on their nests. Beaver, muskrat, even herons are out and about. Find them sheltering from the wind and looking for some of the warmer weather forecast for next week.

Pelicans and Eagles ABOUND as Mississippi River Opens

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Ice has begun to clear from the Mississippi River, and like clock-work, our puddle ducks, diving ducks, White Pelicans, Trumpeter Swans, Sandhill Cranes and Tundra Swans have begun the great move northward. About the 5th of March, we were already hearing the Cranes and the Tunda Swans. This week, the great white Trumpeter Swans have begun passing our porch windows into the small ponds and creek of the valley. For the past four days, large pods of White Pelicans are clustering all along the river from Stoddard to Goose Island. Sandhill Cranes are now establishing their territories and making a rukus!

Except for a sloppy snow day today, river birding has been great. As the weather clears up visit the many roadside rest areas along Highway 35 in Wisconsin. Bald Eagles are abundant–a couple dozen at a sweep of the eye, clustered along the floating ice sheets and beside the big black nests. Happy Spring!!

Tundra Swans are BACK!

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We’ve been enjoying watching large flights of Tundra swans pass over the valley, and sure enough, there are large groups clustered on the slough along Hwy 35 just south of Goose Island and La Crosse! Glistening white with black edging their wings. Generally many are in the air above the flock, in a constant repositioning. Hardwoods are still colorful… oaks, maples, hickory, so come out and enjoy the weekend along the river!!

For more on Tundra swans as well as TRUMPETERS, please use the SEARCH button near the top right of the page.

Become a Volunteer Iowa Bald Eagle Nest Monitor!

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Two Training Opportunities to Become a Volunteer Bald Eagle Nest Monitor

Calling all wildlife watchers! The Iowa DNR will be hosting two live online training workshops for anybody interested in becoming a volunteer bald eagle nest monitor in Iowa. Prospective nest monitors must attend one of the two scheduled workshops. The workshops will be held via Zoom on Saturday February 20th from 10:00 am to noon OR Monday February 22nd from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

Community science volunteers have been helping to monitor Iowa’s eagle population since 2006. Workshop participants will learn about this program and how to get involved and monitor a nest in their area of the state. Iowa has over 400 active bald eagle nests across the state plus many more that have an unknown status. In 2020, volunteer nest monitors collected data on roughly 250 of these nests!

Program coordinator Stephanie Shepherd explains, “With more than 1000 wildlife species in the state, we just don’t have enough staff in the DNR to adequately monitor all the vulnerable species that need attention. This is where community scientists play a crucial role.”

To be a bald eagle nest monitor you will need a pair of binoculars and preferably a spotting scope. Nest monitors are particularly needed in the following counties; Allamakee, Clayton, Delaware, Floyd, Greene, Guthrie, Henry, Jones, Lucas and Winneshiek Counties; but interested people anywhere in the state are welcome. We will try to match you up with a nest near your home base. The time commitment for conducting the survey and submitting data is roughly 6 hours total between March and July each year and will require multiple visits to a nest.

Each workshop will be limited to 20 households and a $5.00 fee is required. Registration will close on February 17th at 5 pm or whenever the 20 household per workshop limit has been reached. Direct questions to Stephanie Shepherd at vwmp@dnr.iowa.gov. 

Interested volunteers must register for one of two training workshops. Workshops are limited to 20 households each. Registration will close when that number of registrants has been reached or on February 17th, 2021, whichever comes first. 

  • February 20, 2021 – Saturday – 10:00am to 12:00pm. The zoom session will open at 9:50am to allow people to get in and get settled. The workshop will start promptly at 10am.
  • February 22, 2021 – Monday – 6:30pm to 8:30 pm. The zoom session will open at 6:20pm to allow people to get in and get settled. The workshop will start promptly at 6:30pm.

There is a $5 fee to cover workshop materials. For more information and to register, go to www.iowadnr.gov/vwmp or e-mail vwmp@dnr.iowa.gov

Eagle Watching in the Time of Covid

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I will begin posting 2021 Bald Eagle Watching events in the Upper Midwest as I learn of them. The events celebrate the opportunity we have had to observe the comeback of American Bald Eagles from the endangered species list. According to the DNR, bald eagle populations in Wisconsin have grown from 108 occupied nests in 1973 to almost 1,700 in 2019.

To read more about the evolution of public Bald Eagle Watches which first began in Keokuk, Iowa, enter the key words “Bald Eagle” in the SEARCH box at the top of this page. Articles include eagle watching advisories, where, when and how to participate, and a general annual schedule of when/where events are held. Our first event:

SAUK PRAIRIE — Sauk Prairie area’s Bald Eagle Watching Days, Wisconsin’s longest-running bald eagle watching event, will be held virtually this year due to COVID-19.

“Our planned virtual programming will feature the release of a rehabilitated bald eagle to the wild, a live raptor show and many more of your favorite events and presentations,” said President of the Ferry Bluff Eagle Council Jeb Barzen. “We’ll provide experts to answer your questions and show eagle watchers how they can safely visit the area and see the birds themselves using our new self-guided tour.”

Programming will be a mix of live streams and pre-recorded videos beginning at 1 p.m. on Jan. 16 and 23 and Feb. 6 and 20. Links and program scheduling can be found here.

If you’d still like to see the eagles in the wild, you can visit the Sauk Prairie area in Jan. and Feb. for a self-guided tour using a mobile device. More information can be found here.

Springing Forward!

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With 70 degree days predicted for early next week, we will be seeing more and more of our returning songbirds and waterfowl. Sandhill Cranes, robins, red-winged black-birds, starlings, bluebirds and such are already singing, in addition to Cardinals, titmice and other year-round residents. Sandhills are still very quiet, so they don’t seem to be claiming their nesting territories yet. Send us your comments!!  Click here to see our birding archive on the Ramblin’ On blog. 

With so little snow this winter, spring flooding is unlikely this season. To see an interactive flood map, as well as past flooding accounts, click here.

Snowy Owl with Jane at 2012 Festival of OwlsThe spring 2012 International Festival of Owls was held in Houston, Minnesota, last weekend. It is another harbinger of spring! (Snowy Owl pix, from Alan Stankevitz is left.)

[adsenseyu2]We had a beautiful barred owl in our backyard early one morning last week. Hawks are paired up and bald eagles are nesting. I’ll be watching for the return of white pelicans next… they follow the opening of the Mississippi River… perhaps looking for fish kill as the ice breaks up.

We have featured WHITE PELICANS, EAGLES and other large waterfowl for many years on www.greatriver.com
Please visit our dedicated Birding Index here at Greatriver.com  It includes a long history of arrival dates for the sandhill cranes in the Upper Mississippi River valley.

Snowy Owl Update

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This year has turned out to be one of the biggest Snowy Owl eruptions in many years. This has allowed many of us to see these magnificent birds that normally inhabit the tundra and it has been a great experience.

This event has resulted in a significant number of birds that have been found that are sick and injured. When they are found, these birds are taken to wildlife rehabilitators including the Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center in rural Chaseburg. These organizations always have trouble finding enough funding to help cover their costs and this event is adding even more financial burdens to organizations that often operate on a shoe string budget and are heavily dependent on donations in order to operate.

Already this year, Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center has had two Snowy Owls brought in to their center. The first was in the last stages of starvation and couldn’t be saved but the second is the victim of what is probably a power line accident and is in fairly good condition. It has an electrical burn on a wing that has required surgeries and it is under weight. However, there is a good chance that it can be saved.

Sue and Merv Broten, the operators of the facility, are working to improve its body mass and fight against aspergillosis. Snowy Owls are very susceptible to this fungal infection when they migrate this far south and one of the keys to prevention is to keep an owl from the stress of under nourishment. Starving Snowies can eat a LOT of mice a day, and at a cost of $1.00 to $1.50 per mouse, building their weight up is an expensive proposition.

In honor of this year’s eruption, the Coulee Region Audubon Society has decided to sponsor a special “Snowy Christmas” campaign to raise funds to help pay for the cost of rehabilitating these owls and to underwrite some of the operations of the Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center. We will match all donations made by our members and friends through the end of January up to a total of $200. We hope that you will consider making a tax deductible contribution to this campaign and therefore support the great work done by the Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center.

If you can help, please send a check to Coulee Region Audubon with a note indicating that it is to be used for this campaign or send a check directly to the Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center at the following address:

Coulee Wildlife Rehab Center, Inc.
E4485 Dodson Hollow Rd
Chaseburg, WI 54621

I hope that you will join me in supporting this cause!!

Dan Jackson, President
Coulee Region Audubon Society
La Crosse, Wisconsin