Eagle survey and photo quiz

Well, there you go. The above photo pretty much describes Wisconsin in winter. At least, western Wisconsin anyway.  Snow, cornfields, hills, ect.  One thing it does not describe though, is just how cold it can get here in the upper midwest. Last Sun, the temperatures started out in the usual 15-20 degree range. Pretty normal for Wisconsin this time of year.  Then, on Monday, the temperatures dropped, sharply. The high temperature balanced on edge in the single digits on Monday and Tuesday and then fell off the edge. Tuesday night, the temperature got down to -20. That's a bit of a chilly night for Wisconsin. We get one or two of those nights every year, but not for very long. Usually only one night.  On Wednesday, the temperature struggled to get to the zero degree mark. That night the temps dropped again. This time it was -26. A bit colder. 

Yesterday (Thursday) the temps decided not to break the -5 degree mark, hovering around -6 all day.  Thursday night, we had one of the coldest nights I've ever seen.  36 degrees below zero!  Now that's COLD!  Windchills on Wednesday and Thursday dropped down to 40 below and in some places 50 degrees below zero!   Windchill this morning was about -50.  

Naturally, all the public schools in the state were closed both yesterday and today. Businesses were closed, activities canceled, people just stayed home. I have been told that Minnesota closed all their schools and schools in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio were closed. 

Thus the saying goes "You know you're from Wisconsin if school has ever been canceled because of extreme cold." 

Anyway, enough about cold for now. I will be making one more post about cold sometime soon, that is, if I can get my video program to work right. 

Getting to the subject at hand: 

Today, I completed my section of the annual Golden Eagle survey that is run by Scott Mehus who is program specialist of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota.

My section covered the area North of US Hwy 14, East of La Crosse, West of Cashton and south of I-90.  

It was a beautiful day (albeit cold) to be out and birding.  I saw several Red-tailed Hawks, quite a few Rough-legged Hawks including one beautiful Dark-morph, one Northern Harrier, one immature Bald Eagle and one beautiful adult Golden Eagle. 

Out of all the eagles on the planet, Golden has always been, and always will be, my favorite eagle. 

I'll leave you with a little photo quiz to bend your brains around.  Time of year and location are in small print under the photo: 

late winter, Wisconsin

I'll post the answer (if it hasn't been answered, otherwise I'll declare a winner) sometime next week.  Good luck! 

Happy Birding! 

Lazy Days

If you've ever wondered what half an inch of ice looks like when it coats a branch, you won't get much better than this.  Ice forms when the air temperature at the ground hovers around freezing.

The falling water doesn't have a chance to turn to snow and comes down as rain, but only just. when it hits an object, like a branch, it crystalizes and turns to ice. Sometimes almost instantly. Every subsequent raindrop adds layers to it. This is the end result.   

I've only ever seen ice like this a few times in my life (I took this photo in Indiana back in Dec) Here in Wisconsin, we only very rarely get ice. We're usually far enough north that all our winter weather comes down as snow.  On those rare occasions that it is warm enough to rain, we usually just get rain. 

So why am I blogging about ice? Because I didn't do much at all today. I didn't even get outside. Lazy Sundays I guess........ 

It'll be interesting birding this week.  We're supposed to have an arctic cold front come though on Mon night.  The high temp on Tues is not supposed to go above 0.  Wed won't be any better with a high of 5 and Thurs, the high temp will be -5.  Now, this is the ambient air temp I'm talking about. On Tues, we're supposed to have winds of 10-20MPH. This will produce wind chills of 30-40 degrees BELOW zero!  Brrrr.  Now THAT is cold! 

On Fri, I'm supposed to run a Golden Eagle survey for The National Eagle center

That will be interesting since the high is supposed to be zero degrees. 

Not quite as cold as on the Golden Eagle trip of last year, but cold enough to freeze your fingers. :D  

Today's blog of the week is Fort Ephemera.

Michael is an amazing photographer.  He has posted to truly spectacular photos here on his Flickr page. 

Happy Birding!