Northerly Treks: King of Bogs and King of the Bog

On June 8th, 2020, I woke up very early in Angora, Minnesota, and headed out from my hotel there to be at Sax-Sim Bog before dawn.  Things ran through my mind that this day would be the first of three full days I would have remaining on my trip.  I was thrilled at what I had seen so far, and the trip was already a big success.  The remaining three days were to be epic too.  Of course the 8th would be reserved for birding Sax-Sim Bog most of the day through mid-afternoon, and then I would drive two hours back to Gretchen's cabin to enjoy the rest of the afternoon/evening and spend the night there.  For the 9th and 10th, I had it in my mind to go to central Wisconsin on the morning of the 9th to bird a prairie region and to try for a lifer in Greater Prairie-Chicken, as well as in another big target in Henslow's Sparrow.  The latter I had seen once and distantly through a scope, and getting better looks was a big deal.  After that, the rest of the 9th and all of the 10th was set aside to bird with Josh and Evan.  The three of us were going to hit up the area of the Mississippi River Valley in southwestern Wisconsin, northeast Iowa, and southeast Minnesota.  We were pumped to bird that region, where a handful of southeastern species find their northern range such as Prothonotary, Cerulean, Kentucky, Prairie, and Worm-eating Warblers; Louisiana Waterthrush, Tufted Titmouse, and Acadian Flycatcher.  From there I was planning to stay at a hotel near the airport in Minneapolis on my final night before flying out very early on June 11th.

In the meantime, this post here is about June 8th, where I was going to bird the famous Sax-Sim Bog.  This location is a collection of bogs and great habitat within a large area.  Most of the area can be accessed by many different roads that run throughout The Bog.  Out of all the far northern places in the Lower 48 in the United States, this is the most visited for birding.  Birding is made straightforward here, and it doesn't take much for birders to be put in great habitat.  Although the habitat is easily birded from a roadside, the birds can still represent quite a challenge and it may take multiple trips to the Bog to see everything that it harbors.  The main attractions at the Bog come in the heart of winter as well as summer.  I've been to Sax-Sim Bog previously in the winter, where birds such as Great Gray Owl, Boreal Owl, Boreal Chickadee, Sharp-tailed Grouse, Pine Grosbeak, Common Redpoll, and more have been observed.  The main draw for birders in winter rounds out to owls.  Great Gray Owls are usually seen, and in good years one may see Great Gray, Snowy, Northern Hawk, and Boreal Owls in the Bog.  Barred Owl and Northern Saw-whet Owls may add to the fun.  In the summer, birds of high interest among many that are within Sax-Sim Bog include Connecticut Warbler, LeConte's Sparrow, Yellow Rail, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Sedge Wren, and a handful of different warblers.  Great Gray Owl is also a year-round resident in Sax-Sim Bog.  Although they are found more easily in winter, the spring and summer months represent a fun time to look for them.  I hoped that I would cross paths with the majestic Great Gray, one of my very favorite birds.

Although I had seen plenty of bogs on my trip and birded an amount of bogs on my trip, it was fun to be in the classic and easily said, "The Bog".

I covered two roads very early as I wanted to look for Great Gray Owls while the day was still very young.  Those roads were McDavitt and Admiral Roads, both of which have good bog habitat and both of which have good Great Gray Owl habitat.  I drove the length of both of them, who actually parallel each other in a north-south direction.  With my windows rolled down, the music of the songbird chorus right as dawn hit at The Bog, was incredible.  I drove south down McDavitt first from the point where I accessed the Bog at, and then I took Admiral Road north.  When driving north on Admiral, I could see birders parked ahead of me and birding.  I was hoping that they were on a Great Gray.  When I got up to them I realized one of them was Tom Johnson, who's a heck of a birder.  I birded with Tom when he was visiting Arizona once.  They were looking at a Boreal Chickadee, and Tom and I agreed to keep each other informed of what we were seeing and told each other what we were looking for.  While he and his buddy were looking for Connecticut Warbler, I was looking for Connecticut Warbler, White-winged Crossbill, LeConte's Sparrow, and of course, the owl.  As they went to look for the warbler, it didn't take them long to find one and send me information on it.  I decided I would check on it later, as I decided to drive McDavitt's length one more time and then come back up Admiral.  When I was halfway up Admiral, I decided to park the truck and hike up the road for a few miles.  I was hoping I would find a Connecticut Warbler of my own and close to the road, and as I read Tom's message, the one they found was about 300 yards off of the road further south in the Bog.  As I started on Admiral, a young Red Fox emerged from it's nearby den and was curious.  Right with it was an American Robin.  I appreciated these two creatures in the same field of view, as they are often the two creatures that get people interested in wildlife watching!

The weather was very overcast out, and a few times it sprinkled rain.  It seemed to be a perfect "gloomy" day to find a Great Gray Owl.  They often stay out longer in such conditions, but as I drove through good habitat for the first hour of the day to cover more habitat and give myself a better chance at finding one, I decided to try birding for other things.  The hike I started was the result.  Birds were hard to photograph in the overcast and poor lighting.  Alder Flycathers were abundant, and a few species that I did get poor photographs of were Canada Jay, Chestnut-sided Warbler, and Blackburnian Warbler.

As I continued on Admiral, I was seeing a decent selection of birds, some of which were in good numbers.  The whinny sound was fun to listen to that came from the tail of a Wilson's Snipe.  I had over thirty species.  At one point I scanned Admiral Road to the north to look at habitat to see how much further I wanted to go.  Up ahead I got sight of an awesome shape on the bare limbs on the lower side of a tree, a shape that had me walking a lot faster in the northward direction.

It was a Great Gray Owl, and perhaps he was out hunting for young greats that needed to be fed.  I snapped pictures as I walked closer and closer, and eventually walked right up to the owl!

When in a bog of the far north, there is no doubt that the Great Gray Owl is the avian king within the bog.  Not many birds come close to holding the majesty that it does.  It's tame demeanor toward people, including this individual as I walked up to it, is welcoming and contagiously epic.

As I stood with this Great Gray Owl, I looked around and up and down the long north and southward Admiral Road, and there wasn't another person in sight.  This is a bird I don't have to say much about to describe how great it is.  Over the next 45 minutes, I had it all to myself, which is probably hard to do at Sax-Sim Bog because of how much it is birded.  The owl simply sat there, and looked around and listened.  I've said plenty about this bird on this blog in the past, let's enjoy a set of photographs of this one!

Here's a video and a digi-binocular'd video I took of Mr. Great Gray.

After about 45 minutes, there were cars and people that came.  And they were birders.  And they wanted to see a Great Gray Owl.  At first, I thought, "well, the fun is over, having it to myself was the best!".

I had a couple from Georgia who had never seen a Great Gray Owl, a lady from Minnesota who had only seen one Great Gray Owl, and a guy from somewhere in the southeast who had never seen a Great Gray Owl either.  They were all blown away by the sight of the bird and when I saw they enjoyed it just as much as I was, I thought, "this is freaking fun too".  The man from Georgia couldn't stop laughing in disbelief, saying, "this is almost too unexpected".  When the people came, the owl got more active.  It heard a rodent below and we thought it was going to pounce a few times.  It switched perches a number of times, but it always stayed close.  For the another 45 minutes, the five of us enjoyed the bird, and Great Gray was still as welcoming as ever.  It was evident that the King of the Bog treated his fans well!  The set of photographs continues..

A weird face made while preening.  

The owl eventually went into the woods much further, becoming a "Gray Ghost" again.

Here's one more video of the owl, and this time the video shows the other birders enjoying it too.

After the owl show, I went south into the Bog further to look and listen for the Connecticut Warbler that Tom Johnson found.  I didn't hear or see it as I looked into a dense bog, one that was impossible to enter.  Tom was out of cell service when I texted him about the Great Gray Owl, and he replied back after the owl went out of sight and back into the forest.  Once a Great Gray goes deep into the woods, it's almost impossible to find without some high gear bog boots.  I then went to a prairie area within the Bog to look for LeConte's Sparrows.  There were a few LeConte's Sparrows who sang, but they didn't show themselves.  The striking Bobolink, however, who was present in numbers, made a great consolation and was fun to watch skylarking as they would sing.

After visiting the prairie habitat, it was already close to noon.  The weather became very windy.  It was hard to bird, and I didn't have further luck with locating LeConte's Sparrows visually, as they were a big target of mine on the trip.  Josh told me that a major storm was coming north and would make birding and camping challenging on the 9th and 10th, and we had to cancel our plans.  That was a bummer, cause Josh and I were surely going to kick ass!  After I had lunch, I went to the spot again where Tom had Connecticut Warbler.  This time, I listened to it singing on and off for about 40 minutes.  It came closer to the road a few times, but was still well enough out of sight and I didn't have a prayer to see it visually.

Something that was funny to me was when I tuned into Facebook briefly for a minute.  There was this live podcast birding thing going on, and I happened to tune in for a minute.  They started the show off with saying that the birding around the United States has been relatively slow overall.  When they started to say, "there is one area that isn't slow and isn't going to slow down for awhile", I knew that they were going to talk about the north in the region I was in.  Think about it-all the breeding warblers, Spruce Grouse, Great Gray Owl, etc.  There was no way they weren't going to say it.  They then proceeding and said, "southeastern Arizona".  I said, "Hey!!  That's not true, but wait, it is no-brainer true when you stop and think about it.  But hey, it's southeastern Arizona as well as the trio of MN, WI, and MI, c'mon people".

I decided to take a 1.5 mile hike along some excellent bog habitat to see what I could come up with.  By looking at eBird reports, people had Connecticut Warblers at this chosen hiking spot of mine too.  I didn't have luck, but several Palm Warblers were heard in midst of the wind, and this one was fun to see.

Sax-Sim Bog is a remarkable place.  I didn't bird it to the hardcore extent that I thought I would.  The Great Gray Owl observation took about two hours and then the wind started much earlier in the day.  Despite that, I still had close to 70 species in the Bog limits in throughout the few hikes I took that totaled about 4 miles in a few different habitats, as well as many short stops in random places to do short, stationary counts.  The Bog not only has bogs, but good habitat variety.  I want to go back another near-future June and spend a few days solely in Sax-Sim Bog.  It's that awesome, and there is a lot to see.

With the birding trip with Josh getting cancelled and with a big storm coming into the area due to a hurricane further south, I knew the 9th and 10th were going to be hard to plan.  Looking at the forecast, it did look like the weather would be good until the afternoon on the 9th.  The morning of the 9th seemed like a good time to try for those lifer Greater Prairie-Chickens and for better looks at Henslow's Sparrow.  That story will be next on Northerly Treks.