A friend and I spent Sunday in the Meadowland-Sax-Zim area, the wonderful birdy bog west of Highway 53 and north of Cloquet. Birding there is good naturally, particularly in winter for finches and owls. Residents of the area, however, have vastly improved your chances of seeing good birds by creating bird-feeding stations in their yards and inviting birders to stop and look. There even are feeders and feeding stations more or less in the middle of nowhere, tended by generous souls. The busiest of these consisted of portions of two deer carcasses smeared with peanut butter and fastened to a tree with bungie cords. Not fancy, but it certainly worked, offering us the best birding of the day. (This site is on Admiral Road four miles north of Sax Road (For directions and maps, see Hendrickson’s Web site, linked at right.)  Overall, we found two Northern Hawk-Owls, dozens of Common Redpolls, with Hoary Redpolls mixed in the flocks, Gray Jays, Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees, Black-billed Magpies, ravens, Evening and Pine grosbeaks, and nuthatches of both flavors. The feeders are in place because of the work of Duluth birding guide Mike Hendrickson. He encouraged bog residents to welcome birders and the business they bring to the small community of Meadowland. A visit to the area would be a winter highlight for any birder. The birds are a Hoary Redpoll (I think), and a Gray Jay. Â

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Bird feeding, Bird travel, Bird websites, Go places to go birding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.