Bird vs. Fish

Rare Birds of St. Louis Co. MN – April

No, this isn’t an April fool’s joke! Willow ptarmigan has been spotted in the county historically this month.

Leif Erikson Park

Today, we crossed the bridge to access the trail that goes down to the lake. We walked down behind the outdoor stage and got to the shoreline before continuing to loop back.

To keep us from going stir crazy, we’ve been frequenting the park at the end of the point (its namesake). Today, we crossed the dune at the parking lot next to the trail gate. We walked on the beach until the cold wind chased us back to our car.

Satyr Comma

Today marks the emergence of one of Wisconsin’s earliest butterflies from hibernation: the satyr comma! It’s a “little known” butterfly of northern forests. I’d love to see one, and I’m glad to start thinking about butterflies after this long winter.

Farm Roads

We spent our last morning in Arenal on the farm roads. We started the morning by walking down to white hawk villa, but backtracked after not finding much activity. On the trail just past Phil’s villa, we were pretty excited to be able to confidently separate 2 rufous mourners from the pihas we’d seen the […]

Arenal Observatory Lodge

Today was our only full day in Arenal, so we made it count! We were awakened by a common pauraque singing in the “nautical twilight” hours, which would bookend our day. We got to the observatory lodge at 6 AM and made our way on the “orange trails” to the garden. There, we saw our […]

Arenal

Today was our journey to Arenal! Once we got to Nuevo Arenal, we got our lifer palm tanagers. Downtown, we finally got good looks at gray-breasted martins. Once we arrived at our accommodations, Paul spotted our lifer Passerini’s tanagers and long-tailed tyrant. I spotted our lifer piratic flycatcher. Then, we went into El Castillo for […]

Santa Rosa National Park

Today we decided it was worth it to get to Santa Rosa early, and we weren’t disappointed! I finally got good looks at the banded wrens we briefly glimpsed the day before. I was also delighted by the time we were able to spend with yellow-olive flycatchers. Not only did we have great looks at […]

Pacífico

This morning, we heeded our bird alarm clocks and were treated to views of streak-backed orioles and black-headed trogon again right within the confines of the condo complex! We continued up the road and found stripe-headed sparrow in an area that, sadly, may be marked for development. As we walked back down the road, I saw my lifer squirrel cuckoo and rose-throated becards in the […]

Coco

In our condo complex, there were several cinnamon hummingbirds along the driveway. In the evening, there was a small flock of lesser nighthawks!