Short-eared Owl

The last month has been very good for me, for owls in the state. I found a Barred Owl while out deer hunting on opening day, in Lincoln County. It was near sunset as we were driving out of the woods. It was sitting about 20′ up, but from our vantage point on the road, it was eye level. I always carry my camera with me, and it paid off that day. The Screech Owls were found at parks in Milwaukee County. I’ve always seen the gray and brown morph’s before, but this was my first red morph. The Short-eared Owls were at Killsnake Wildlife Area, in Chilton. There were at least 12 flying around at one time. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 20+ of them. The Saturday I went, it was cloudy with low clouds, making it appear darker. That is usually my luck when I have a chance to go there. The first one I saw, flew out just after 3pm and landed about 70 yards behind my truck, on the side of the road. From then on, they just kept coming and flying over the fields, at times coming rather close to the roads. They were very vocal and chasing each other around as well. It was fun to watch! Photos below are from the last month in Wisconsin. Enjoy!

Barred Owl

Eastern Screech Owl

My friend Lorri and I were planning a road trip on Friday 12/27. We were originally going north to find some of the winter birds. However, in combination with the negative reports and warm weather, we decided to try for the Varied Thrush instead. We arrived at the UW-Stout parking lot 21 at 7:15am, where it was apparently feeding with a group of robins. It was still fairly dark, so we parked facing the berry trees, in case they came in before sunrise. Sure enough, about five minutes later, the thrush came in with the robins. This was a life bird for both of us! They were feeding on berries in the snow, that got knocked off the trees. The trees were right alongside the road, so they would fly up into the larger trees, when trucks would drive past. We pulled up right next to the trees and waited for them to come back down. After 20 minutes or so they came back down. They would go up and come back down about every 30-45 minutes, and would disappear and then reappear into the larger trees. We then caught some bad luck. A woman was plowing the parking lot with a front end loader with a large plow, scraping across the asphalt and making a lot of noise. We waited it out, but the thrush never came back. We did see a flock of robins head off to the south, during the snow removal. We spent the majority of the morning there, and before heading out, we decided to take a ride around the block, to see if we could relocate the thrush. We did! It was with several robins in parking lot 30, between the fire and police departments. We didn’t stick around to see if it would come down to some of the berry trees over there.

We then thought we would head over to the Buena Vista Grasslands, hoping to see the male Snowy Owl, that has been around. We didn’t find any Snowy Owls, but did see several Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers and American Kestrels. We also saw 38 Greater Prairie-Chickens, which were lifers for me. They were very far out, but were flushed by something and flew a good distance, that we could watch them. We drove around the area for the rest of the afternoon, but there wasn’t too much activity. We did get 3 Short-eared Owls just after sunset. They were in the field southeast of the intersection at Hwy W and Taft Rd. The photos below are from the day.