Winter - A Great Time To Get Out of Your Yard to Bird

I recognize that the entire purpose of this blog was / is aimed at encouraging readers to landscape with native plants to build a healthy ecosystem at home and enjoy the wildlife which inhabits your yard. However winter wildlife watching can become run of the mill. Another Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, woodpeckers back at the suet, finches on the nyjer feeders....sometimes you need to get out.

During the winter a host of birds will look for places with open water to pass their time. Open water provides places to find food, places to swim in relative safety, and of course a place to drink. The upper Midwest has a number of places where there will be some amount of open water. In fact, for some of you this water might just be right near your backyard.

Water features of note are good sized rivers (especially ones which generate hydro-power) like the Wisconsin River. Sites near hydro electric dams tend to remain open. Areas which end up artificially heated by human activity or urbanization like the Mississippi near Dubuque, IA or Lake Michigan near Manitowoc or Milwaukee may also be places with open waters. Larger bodies of water like Lake Michigan or the Mississippi are unlikely 100% freeze over anyway and may be slower to freeze up in the fall / early winter when compared to smaller bodies of water.

So what are you likely to see?

Bald Eagles for starters.

Bald Eagle Days in Sauk Prairie - 2012?

A host of Midwestern cities have eagle watching festivals or tours including: Sauk Prairie WI, Dubuque IA, Galena IL, Prairie du Chien WI and Starved Rock State Park IL.

You will also see waterfowl too of course

Tundra Swan nears Brownsville MN 2016

All of the Mallards and Canada Geese which had been loitering around the golf course, your yard, the local retention pond are joined by mergansers, golden eyes, swans, and less common varieties of duck and geese in open water wherever it's found. Not only are a number of these species attractive; they can be easy to spot as they are moving about in flocks. On their own merit these are worthy birds to watch. Personally, I've been most interested in the migrating swans. These can be seen near the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge in places like Alma WI and Brownsville MN. Most recently, I encountered Trumpeter Swans on Lake Evergreen near Hudson, IL (and as you can see others have seen them too.)

If it's starting to feel like winter is dragging on, jump over to ebird and explore the data, either by species or region and plan an outing to see something which holds your interests and makes the cold bearable.