August 2024

Aug 18 – What kind of Grouse? This morning the female grouse showed up with 2 chicks. She had 6 at the beginning of the summer. I thought it was a Dusky Grouse, but she seems small for a big grouse. I would appreciate hearing what your folks think. Western Tanangers and Western Wood Pee Wees are having a good time up there as well. – Grayce Holzheimer

Aug 18 – Siskin. Have had Pine Siskin and Goldfinch coming to our sunflowers. Had a report of a Hummingbird yesterday. Between our 4 water features we have almost constant activity, the fountains including the bucket seem to get the most activity. – Richard Mousel

Aug 18 – Raptors. a pair of these have been hunting and screaming at my place all a.m.  the mourning doves don’t seem to be worried – the power lines and fences are covered with mourning doves. we saw a scarlet tanager on the Riceville Road yesterday p.m.  In the nest under the porch eaves adult sparrows are busy feeding and I can hear the little peeps and cheeps nest is so deep and wedged up there pretty good – I haven’t been able to see the babies sparrows, finches, and chickadees at the feeders and starlings in the birdbaths. mourning doves are gathering on the powerlines but come down into the yard once in a while – Bev Axelsen

Aug 17 – Bluebird trails 2024. Finished checking out my Bluebird boxes this morning, was definitely an interesting year. Extremely cold and snowy and then Extremely hot, the cold and snow was very rough on a number of nests, but thankfully many renested successfully. A big surprise was several nests still active recently, including today, we had a Wren fledgling still in the box this morning. The Wrens nested successfully after 5 Mountain Bluebirds fledged from the same box.  Another interesting item is nests with both Bluebird and Swallow eggs in the same nests. A mix of eggs. Who’s nest? Hungry little Bluebirds. 2024 was a decent year only down about 15%. We had approximately 526 birds fledge, of which 361 were Mountain Bluebirds, another 118 were Tree Swallows, 40 Northern House Wrens and 7 Mountain Chickadees. I would like to thank my chauffeur Dan Bennett for driving me around, it was great to have him back this year. This year we also had company tag along learning all about Bluebirding, it was great, we frequently birded the Sluice Boxes while we were in the area. I’d also like to thank UMBA for funding the Bluebird boxes, we couldn’t do it without them. – Richard Mousel

Aug 14 – Found it. I finally got away to visit Freezout Lake and found the Hudsonian Godwit without a problem, right in the “thumb” area as reported by several other observers.  The light was terrible for photos, but I took a few next to a Marbled Godwit.  It was more the size of a Greater Yellowlegs that it walked past. Hundreds and hundreds of brown ducks that appeared to be mostly mallards, shovelers, gadwalls.  Several hundred avocets on pond 1, where the biggest number of shorebirds was located.  I missed seeing a bittern, but did see nearly 50 species.  It was fun. – Beth Hill

Aug 5 – Wow. 6 Black-headed Grosbeaks under and on our feeders at sunset – the whole family.  The little ones are sitting on seeds – begging!  And boy can you hear the begging calls. – Beth Hill

Aug 5 –  Today’s birds. don’t know if it’s the cooler weather, the bit of rain we got, or the dense fog

but I have a lot of birds at the feeders the usual sparrows, house finches, three chickadees, several mourning doves, a couple northern flickers, starlings, a Eurasian collared dove or two, and all kinds of fly catchers – I can ID eastern and western kingbirds. see one or two large hawks soaring and hunting. one robin has returned but it is not one that comes up to the deck begging for grapes. a red wing blackbird has shown up again – saw a lot of them in the Spring. we had a little house wren. today we have three small yellow warblers which I think are Wilson’s. and one teeny tiny one that I cannot capture on film as it flits around. my husband says he saw a common yellowthroat when I wasn’t home. – Bev Axelsen