Sunday February 16th was the final day of the festival and despite Saturday's disappointing tour I decided to go ahead and go on the Duluth Tour I had signed up for. This was probably mistake as the roads were clear and Rob & Virginia saw some good birds on their own.
The Duluth trip started with a stop at a feeder - just Black Capped Chickadee and Red-breasted Nuthatch - and a successful Northern Hawk-Owl stake out spot. The Snowy Owl was gone from its spot and although we wandered an area where a Great Grey Owl had been seen we came up empty. Very empty we saw no birds at all, just a totally frozen Lake Superior. We saw a camp of tents out on the ice, wind breaks for ice fishermen. Crow, raven, pigeon and a bald eagle were fly-bys in the morning. We crossed into Wisconsin to visit the Superior dump and found 2 Great Black-backeds and 1 Glaucous among many Herring Gulls and then stopped at Duluth's Canal Park for a small patch of open water with Common Goldeneye, Common Merganser and Mallards. A pretty dismal return for a planned tour!
I did an afternoon dash to the Sax-Zim Bog driving McDavitt once and Admiral three full times and once more from the south end to the feeders and back, I saw a perched crow, one Gray Jay and one Northern Shrike as well as 7 Black-capped Chickadees on each pass of the feeders. What I did not see, of course, was a Great Grey Owl. At least 7 other cars were doing the rounds in search of this bird.
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