Back in the land of snow

Heading north for winter birds.

Crossing the Mackinac Bridge with no snow or ice .

As we headed north into Chippewa County there was still no snow.

Finally some snow, but not a lot.

Bald Eagles are currently abundant from Rudyard north to Sault Ste. Marie.

This week the Michigan DNR is asking for numbers of turkeys and where they are found.

In the evening we headed into town for dinner.

Our dinner on the first night was at The Wicked Sister. It was quite nice.

And, of course I am always folding paper into various little birds while waiting for food to arrive.

Day two started with breakfast at Penny’s Kitchen, which we all like. It is a highly recommender breakfast site, especially since they open at 7 AM.

Oh no, more paper birds, this time caught in the act of copulating.

One of our target birds for the morning was Sharp-tailed Grouse. We were not disappointed in the number we found.

Going to the Dafter landfill we were searching for Glaucous Gull. A bonus was finding this one Great Black-backed Gull (center back, standing taller that the 1000s of nearby Herring Gulls).

Yes, we did find several Glaucous Gulls as well.

Then it was off to Pickford for lunch.

The feeders at the deli were covered with grosbeaks, bot Pine and Evening Grosbeaks. After this we were off in search of other birds.

We’ve watched this eagle nest for years as it has grown in size.

Among the thousands of Snow Buntings we found a number of Horned Larks as well as a larger number of Common Redpolls.

Here is one of the several murals that we saw in Sault Ste. Marie.

And another mural before dinner.

Dinner on night two was at Zorbas, a Greek restaurant that was quite nice.

Yes, more paper birds by me and something by my friend Mike, the engineer.

More later…