Minnesota in the Winter

Please treat all images as copyrighted and do not use or reproduce – thanks. DEClapp

Cold, snowy, and gray might best describe the usual winter weather around and north of Duluth, Minnesota. In February of 2024 not so much. For a naturalist the northern parts of Minnesota are a draw; Black Spruce, bogs, uncommon birds and mammals, and very modest traffic are all the bright side of the colder months in rural and remote Minnesota. The image below is a hotel room view of the hoar frost (rime ice) that coated everything during the week we were in the area. We had little sunshine but nice winter views every day. The sun did give us a couple spectacular sunsets.

For a birder the Great Gray Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, Boreal Owl, Bohemian Waxwing, Boreal Chickadee, Hoary Redpoll, Pine Siskin, Canada Jay, Black-backed and Three-toed Woodpeckers and a couple grosbeaks are almost magnetic. For a mammal person there are possible sightings of Pine Martin and Ermine to keep you going. Good sightings, life birds, are worth all the the cold and wind the north country can offer.

Once you are in the Duluth area* and settled into some sort of lodging it is time to make a final plan. Check the hotspots on eBird and create a map. In general birders head or the Sax Sim Bog area. This is a block of land about fifteen by twenty miles (300 square miles or more) that holds a variety of habitats but features Black Spruce woodlands located about an hour to the north. It is well known and well visited.

*Duluth is barely in Minnesota when approaching from the east. It is where Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Lake Superior meet. We drove 400 mile across Wisconsin and only about 5 miles into Minnesota to reach our lodging.

The Sax Zim area is varied; frame, forests, and folks getting away from it all seem to dominate. The woods is dense, Black Spruce are thin inverted cones and the sun doesn’t reach the forest floor – that is, when there is sunshine.

There are a few feeding stations stuck in the woods and a few homes that keep feeders full and an invitation out for birders. In rural cold areas bird feeders are most helpful in getting a sense of activity. There is a map of the Sax Sim birding area that is available on line or at the Visitor’s Center. Some of the bird feeding areas also have port-a-potties! As most birding can be done from the wide gravel roads and very wide road shoulders you will likely find photographers or birders near every good bird or mammal. You may find the bird yourself but once word gets around about a speciality there will be cameras and listers nearby. Everyone we saw was respectful and polite….hopefully that is the norm.

There may be Ruffed Grouse feeding along the edge ion the road or walking down the road. There are also Spruce and Sharp-tailed Grouse around the area, but Ruffed Grouse are much more common and certainly easier to see.

The Canada Jay is a regular in the spruce woodlands and it is quite fond of free food and seems to really enjoy peanut butter. The woodland and residential feeders will have beef suet and black oil sunflower seed and then there will be brown smears of peanut butter on the trees at many of the feeding spots. The jays and Boreal Chickadees seem to favor the peanut butter offerings. As a kid I used to bore holes in a birch log and fill the holes with peanut butter and hang it out for the birds. Maybe I’ll start doing that again.

The two images above are of a Northern Hawk Owl that was hanging around a main road (a blacktop road in fact) and was easily seen but not always easy to photograph. We saw it every day we drove this road and had good looks each time. This long-tailed owl hunts small mammals during the day and is a breeding bird (though not at all common) in northern Minnesota and almost all of Canada. It is a tree-top bird making it easier to locate that many birds and almost all mammals.

Many of the creatures, plants included, in the northern lands have had to adapt to long dark winters and long bright summers. The days vary greatly throughout the year. The temperatures also vary. It is not unusual for owls to hunt in the day time when the day is 14 – 15 – 16 – 17 hours long and the night is not really dark. This habit has become a life style for Snowy and Northern Hawk and Great Gray Owls. The small mammals have adapted to life under the snow. The Ermine (Short-tailed Weasel) and the various Microtus (voles) have tunnels in the snow for months on end. But Great Gray Owls can find them in up to 18 inches of powder snow.

Yes, mammals were there in the spruce forest also. The most common furred animals were the White-tailed Deer and the Red Squirrel. The deer in the farm lands and the squirrels at that peanut butter and sunflower seed mentioned before. But northern woodlands have some special mammals that I/we rarely get to see in New England; Pine Martin, Ermine (Short-tailed Weasel, Porcupine, and some mammals more common out there than elsewhere like Bobcat, Coyote, and even Lynx and Wolf). We did see many of these and the images below depict the Pine Martin and Ermine – winter pelage for this weasel that far north is white, and a rather blurry Porcupine.

The Porcupine is a bark-eater and is found in deciduous trees. The hairy look is from there guard hairs that are quite a bit longer than the quills. The lower, and last, image is of a surprise mammal in February – though not uncommon most of the year – it is a Muskrat. It should be curled up in a house made of cattails and reeds avoiding the frozen waterway it calls home. But we saw it in open water and gathering food! A Muskrat in February in Minnesota!?! . A most unexpected animal; but perhaps something that we will see more and more of as the winters become much more gentle.