Successfully Disastrous Birdwatching at the Sax-Zim Bog

“In other words, a blog on the bog.”

Quick pre-script before the blog; I just want to share with all my regular readers who aren’t also my real-life facebook friends that I recently published a very professional, very revised nature blog for a government agency. And I did it as part of my job! It’s about the history of an ice harvest event at a local nature center here in Minneapolis, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I got to interview the people in charge of running the event, and that was really cool. I think you should check it out!

Ok, back to the “real” blog. Though let’s be honest, the real blog is the friends we make along the way…

You might not know it, but I like birds. Like, a lot. I haven’t talked about them on here in a while, but don’t let that fool you; they’re just about all I ever talk about in normal, day-to-day conversations. All my jokes are about birds. My online profile bio humor is entirely based around birds and chaos, often at the same time. I really, really, really like birds. So much that I drove three hours north to a bog in the middle of fucking nowhere, Minnesota just for the chance (the chance!) to see a Great Gray Owl, one of North America’s largest and most northern owls. Spoiler alert, I didn’t see the damned birds, and I knew this was a risk going in, but I went anyway. That’s how much I love birds.

Despite all this, I’m not actually all that good at bird ID, believe it or not. Sure, I’d put myself in the top 90th percentile compared to the rest of the world’s population when it comes to bird ID, and it’s a cool party trick with people who don’t know better, but comparing my bird ID skills to people who actually can ID birds? Like naturalists or ornithologists or really, really passionate birders? I get blown out of the water. Up until this weekend, I couldn’t have told you the difference between a Boreal Chickadee and a Black-capped Chickadee, because I didn’t know Boreal Chickadees existed. I have no ear for tone or music and my ID by call is abysmal, with the exception of certain common birds, like Blue Jays (which my parents can attest to after one woke me up from a nap and I correctly ID’d the bird that had woken me. I was five.)

But I would not consider myself a “professional” or even “proficient” birder by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not because I don’t have a fancy camera or anything, mind you; fancy gear a birder does not make. That being said, the most intense birders usually have big cameras and fancy binoculars, because it helps you get closer to the birds. I’ve got a pretty damn nice set of binoculars, actually, I think a gift from my grandfather and Jane, but still, no camera. Which is why all these pictures of birds close up were taken through my phone, through the binocular lens, held by two shaky cold hands. Which is why they’re circles and kind of fish-eye, like a 90’s rap album. And that’s ok.

I am an amateur birder at best. Like I said, my identification skills are above average for the country as a whole, but among my peers, I fall short. I don’t mind this (usually), and although I wish I was better at birds, I’m ok to learn slowly. I’m in it for the vibes. I don’t have to know exactly everything about every species of bird I see. I don’t even have to know their names, like Steven or Sasha or Penelope, most of the time. I’m just happy to watch the birds and puzzle out what they do and wonder why they do it. I just love hanging out with birds. Is it more satisfying when I can name them? Yeah. Is it cool to learn stuff about them? Of course. But that’s secondary. I just really, really love birds. And I think there’s a gap between what people think of as “birders” and what birders actually are. Sure, there are competition birders, and professional ornithologists who are paid to know birds, but anyone can be a birder if they like birds and put in the time to go look for them. I think that gets forgotten a lot; you, too, can be a birder. All you have to do is love birds.

But you know what kind of birds I love more than any others? I’ll give you one guess, and if you get it wrong, I will reach through my computer screen to rip out your chest hairs. Ready? Ok, let’s all say it together now; one, two, three… PARROTS aw fuck

Owls, of course! How could it be anything other than owls? It’s literally in the web address. I am the owlman. I am literally named after a bird. All of my humor is bird-based. I have more owls in my bedroom than there are functioning light rail lines in Minneapolis, and you can quote me on that. Owls (and birds in general, I guess) are approximately 20% of my personality to most people who know me, and closer to 75% for those who don’t. I could do a word association test with people who know me, and I guarantee everyone will say “owl” (or “bird”) at some point in the process. And there’s a good fucking reason for that; I really do love owls. They’ve been my favorite birds since I was little. And although I don’t have quite the same borderline-unhealthy obsession with them that I used to have, I still love owls. And the best place in Minnesota to see the most possible number of species of owls is the Sax-Zim Bog. That’s where I went to try and see my Great Grays (or snowys, if they were there).

See, the Sax-Zim bog, which is less of one giant bog and more of a collection of bog-adjacent habitats just south of Hibbing, Minnesota (home of the Greyhound Bus Museum), is a perfect location for so many different species of owls. It’s far enough north that you get the Great Grays, the Snowy owls, Northern Hawk Owls, and sometimes even Boreal Owls, but it’s also far enough south (relatively speaking) that you can get Great Horned, Barred, Barn (maybe? I can’t confirm) and Saw-Whets. It’s a habitat that is made up of so much edge habitat, or when one kind of ecosystem borders another, because it’s constantly shifting between bog and prairie and farm field and forest and back to bog again, and owls love their edge habitat. They are little edge lords. They’re kind of edgey. They push me over the edge, into a homicidal rage, they do. Plus, because of the high diversity of habitats, the Sax-Zim area also makes great wintering grounds for dozens of other species of northerly birds. It also has a nice little visitor center for birders, and a history sign that explicitly says the Owen Wilson/Jack Black/Steve Martin 2011 comedy movie The Big Year was a crucial turning point in bog-and-bird conservation. Go figure.

A helpful man from the DNR at the (absolutely glorious) Minnesota State Fair had told me to visit the bog. This was one of the very first weeks I lived in the state, way back in 2021. He said I could find owls there. Hell, say less. You could get me in the back of a shady van by telling me I’d find owls there. I would commit tax fraud for less. And I love bogs to boot, so it was inevitable that I would travel to the Sax-Zim bog eventually. I mean, how could you not love bogs? The ground is squishy, bouncy, and made of plants, they’re incredibly biodiverse, you can squeeze the moss and drink the water straight out of it and you won’t get sick, they grow cranberries (which I am slowly developing a taste for), they are home to carnivorous plants even this far north, and, up here, they often contain one of the only coniferous trees to lose their leaves; the tamarack. Plus, as I already mention, they contain tons of birds. Bogs are awesome. But they are less awesome when they’re covered in two feet of snow and you can’t jump on the moss. Now they just look like any other pine forest. So that was, admittedly, a bit disappointing. Still very pretty, but disappointing.

But speaking of disappointing, the problems with my trip began early. So, the general outline of it is that I got off work Thursday, drove up to Hibbing and spent the night there, explored the bog area for all of Friday, explored some more on Saturday, then drove back down to Minneapolis via Duluth that evening. It was a day and a half of birding, and it was really great. But you know what isn’t great in rural northern Minnesota in mid-winter? Roads. The roads fucking sucked up there. And I fucking suck at driving and also estimating what kind of traction my car has. Turns out, it has much less than I anticipated. Friday morning I got up bright and early, before the sun had even rose, to go out and see the owls. Owls are, as everyone (hopefully) knows, nocturnal. This isn’t quite true. They’re generally nocturnal, yes, but they’re also crepuscular. Your best chance of seeing an owl is around dusk and dawn. So I got up at the earliest time I’ve gotten up since last summer and drove down to the bog. I visited a lake, which was nice, and then tried to get to a bog that, I didn’t realize at the time, wasn’t plowed in winter. Uh-oh.

You can probably figure where this is going. I got stuck on the road. Not in the road, or in a ditch (that comes later); on the road. I reached a point where I just had zero traction. The wheels would spin and I’d dig myself a nice little hole of ice for my tires. Fuck. I got out, assessed the situation, dug out some snow, tried to create traction with sticks under my tires, and got myself to get going again. Holy shit! I dug myself out!

Then I got stuck again. About five feet down the road. At this point, I was considering setting the car on fire. If it hadn’t been for a very helpful man on a snowmobile that was driving that same road, I would have been stuck there all day, or I would have had to call a tow truck, or both. I am eternally grateful to that stranger on the snowmobile. After all, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. But even with his help, it took us probably an hour to get my car to a point where I could turn around and go back down that same road, because this was an unplowed dead end. Reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse forward, okay turn a little bit, ok give me a breathe I might have a heart attack from pushing this car, reverse, forward, reverse forward, and it’s stuck again, reverse, forward, reverse, spin around, drive blackout, don’t get stuck at that last hill. Because I am a moron and Google didn’t warn me. But I made it out.

Not two hours later I got stuck again. This was after I had visited the bog visitor center, of course, and now I knew where best to look for owls. “Be careful out there, the ditches are deep,” the man at the nature center helpfully said. I don’t need to worry about that, I’m the only one on the road! Wrong. I did need to worry about that, and I was still the only one on the road. Turns out, not only are the ditches deep, they are steep, sudden, and filled with two feet of powdery snow that gives the illusion of flat terrain. I got a little too close to the edge of the road while distracted by an owl-shaped blob, because everything in a tree looks owl-shaped from a quarter mile away, and in an instant, I was stuck with my passenger side tires two feet below where they should be. There was absolutely zero way anyone was digging me out of that one. Heavens help me, there was a tow truck call number on the map I got at the visitor center. I called that number and then waited two hours in my car before I got out of the ditch. And I didn’t see a single bird that whole time. At least my parents supported me in my sorrows. Thanks, mom and dad.

That wasn’t even the last time I had car trouble. Thankfully, it was the last time I was irrevocably stuck, and I spent the rest of the trip creeping slowly down the smack dab middle of every road that wasn’t a major highway, scared out of my fucking mind that I’d get stuck again. There was no driving-and-looking for me. From that point on, if I wanted to look for an owl, I threw on the hazards and put it in park. Right in the middle of the dog damn road. If that’s how the snow is gonna be, that’s how I’m gonna play.

Here’s another amusing anecdote; later on, on the drive home from Duluth, I took the highway and was going about 75 miles per hour when my car started to vibrate like it was churning butter (not a euphemism). Hmm. That doesn’t feel right. But maybe I’ll just back off to 70 and keep going. Pop. Smack. VIBRATION INCREASES. Check Engine light starts flashing. Engine power cuts to fifty percent. Nope. Guess not. I think my suspension just killed itself. I pulled over to a gas station (after back tracking five miles on reduced power because there is fucking nothing around Duluth except trees) and called my mom and the stranger who lives in her garage. They helpfully suggested it might be a dirty fuel injector, and was, hopefully, just coincidental to the fact that I took my Toyota off-roading into a ditch. So I got some injector cleaner, fueled up my gas, and drove at 60 miles per hour down the highway for the rest of one hundred and fifty miles home. And the car didn’t rattle itself to death!

That Monday, after the shops were open, I took my car in. My favorite mechanic, who is now perhaps the most trustworthy practically-a-stranger that I know, took one look at my car and said, “you should knock all that snow off your wheel wells. That’ll fix it.” And you know what? He was fucking right. It didn’t fix everything, it still vibrates up past 80 or 85, but who really needs to go faster than 80 anyway? At least now I can drive at regular highway speeds without worrying about being trapped in a vibrating metal death cage.

But that’s enough about the disastrous part of the trip! Those were the only disasters, really. That, and not actually seeing a Great Gray owl. But then again, nobody else out there did, either, and I talked to just about every other car I saw in the bog. Because you could stop anyone on the side of the road out there and 99% of the time, they’re looking for owls, too. And with the help of strangers, once again, I did find providence. I saw so many cool birds, even without the Great Gray, it was worth it. For example, at the visitor center and everywhere else I went, I saw Evening Grosbeaks. Which, despite being the most populous bird up there, I had never even heard of before. But I sure as hell heard them when I was out there. I could hear them from a quarter mile away before I even saw the bird feeder.

I also saw Pine Grosbeaks, which at first I thought were purple house finches, then I said to myself, no wait, these are like twice the size of a purple house finch, then I wondered if the bog made some sort of giant-ass mutant birds, but they were just regular grosbeaks after all.

And there was, of course, the Boreal Chickadee, which I will not replicate here because all the pictures of them that I got were shit. But at the same time I saw that chickadee, I also saw Canada Jays, which were quite fun to watch. Fun fact, they’re in the same family as (obviously) blue jays, but also crows and ravens. As part of the corvid family, they’re some of the smartest birds in North America.

And, of course, turkeys. Turkeys aren’t rare or anything, or birds I hadn’t seen before, but they’re always a fun time. They make such goofy sounds and they just kind of strut around with their shiny feathers and stupid bald heads. I love watching them walk and peck at the ground. They just look so funny.

But then? Ooooh, but then! See, the evening grosbeaks, boreal chickadees, and Canada jays I saw on the first day. Then I got stuck in a ditch, headed over to some feeders, saw the turkeys, and did what you’re supposed to do to go looking for owls; drive up and down some lonely country roads and hope that you can spot something sitting up in the trees. I also stopped at the town hall and pooped in their porta-potty, because that’s the only public restroom in a five-mile radius. I appreciated their town sign, which gave me major Schitt’s Creek vibes. Then I went back to looking for owls. It’s not easy doing this with just my own shitty pair of eyes. I wear glasses for a reason. But it wasn’t just me. Didn’t seem like anyone had much luck with Great Grays. I even got out at one point and hiked alone, into the dark, in two feet of snow, it’s two degrees outside, in unmonitored DNR land. That was probably the most dangerous thing I did on the whole trip. Don’t worry, though, I had water and matches with me.

It got too dark at that point, so I went to a random local dive bar and got a surprisingly flavorful dinner there. I drove around Hibbing, which is a cute town and also deeply depressing, because for every nice little bar, there are about three closed-up shopfronts, and a major industrial plant sits about two blocks off of main street. Besides being home to the Greyhound Bus Museum (it was closed) and Bob Dylan’s childhood home (it was a house), Hibbing is also home to what was at one point, and may still be, the world’s largest active open-pit iron mine. You know, the kind where they remove everything on top of the iron and leave massive scars in the earth. That’s… discomforting. Wasn’t so sure if I could drink the water or not. But their high school and town hall are really nice! Huge, old brick buildings, the kinds you’d expect from a historic town that was once the center of an entire industry.

The next morning I did it all again, got up real early, saw the sunrise as I drove, tracked up and down these forested bog roads to try and see owls, and… no dice. I was getting pretty disheartened by this point. I went to a handful of bog boardwalks, which were cool but, like I said earlier, all looked the same. Although they did have a bunch of deer ribcages on sticks, picked clean by the birds and animals, as if in some sort of pagan offering, so that was pretty metal. But I drove around, tried to hit the boardwalks, went back to the visitor center, warned other drivers about the dangers of the misleading ditch, and resigned myself to the fact that I would see no owls. The next chance I’d have to see Great Grays wouldn’t be until sunset, and I had to home that evening. So I prepared to call it quits, and decided I’d try one last look at the Femboy Fermoy Wildlife Management Area, where the twinks grasses grow tall and strong, and where there were reports of a Northern Hawk Owl. Just for one last shot.

I turn onto the highway north of the management area, and there are cars lined up on the road. Holy shit, what’s this? If you’ve ever been to a national park, you know that cars lined up means wildlife. Usually big wildlife. So I pulled up behind a car, jumped out, and lo and behold, they had spotted a Northern Hawk Owl in a tree about a half mile from the road. And suddenly, there she was.

Reader, I tell you, if that had been all I’d seen of an owl that weekend, I would have been happy. I could have gone home and reported having seen one of the North America’s only diurnal owl species, one of the northern-most species of owl, one of the most remote and under-studied owls in the whole world. But I was determined. I had the time. I was going to get closer to that bird. And so I began walking out in the snow-covered field, helpfully walking where someone else had already been so I didn’t sink into the snow with every step. I walked straight out, to a tree parallel to the one the owl was in, and prepared to cross at a right angle. When suddenly I heard a rush of branches and something settling above me, and I look up and the owl is right fucking there. In the very tree I had hiked out to. Just chilling, minding her own business. I could have cried.

Not many things excite me anymore. I have talked about this previously, with things like holiday traditions and whatnot. But I swear to you I felt absolutely giddy at this damned bird that just sat in a tree and paid me no mind. I did it. I saw an owl. My patience was rewarded. By taking that last trip, that last ditch effort, it all paid off. Imagine if I hadn’t done that? I never would have seen this gorgeous bird. And the timing was just unbelievable. That owl? Right there? Flying to the tree I had walked to? It was insane. It still doesn’t feel real. And the very friendly family I met who had also walked out to the owl commented on this, too. My timing was perfect. It was like the owl was there for me. That’s ridiculous, of course. The owl didn’t care who I was or what I wanted. She was just hunting, as owls do. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel perfect. It was the best possible way to end the trip.

Sure, it wasn’t a Great Gray or anything, but as that same friendly family also pointed out to me, Northern Hawk Owls are much harder to find than Great Grays. So, really, I got upgraded in owl sightings. I stood out there for like twenty minutes, just watching this owl as it sat in its tree. I just stared at it, and wandered around the base of the tree for the best view, gobsmacked and grinning. I did it. I saw an owl in the Sax-Zim bog. I had succeeded in my first solo birding trip, despite everything that had befallen me up to that point. I was/am so happy.

After that I cleaned up my car, hit a couple last boardwalks, and got on the road to home. It had been a long-ish weekend of driving (lots and lots of driving) and birding and a little bit of walking here and there. It was great to be out in nature, but also, it was like negative fifteen Fahrenheit at one point, so I was ready to go home. Oh, yeah, one more minor disaster, I wanted to go to a state park on the way back to home, to get another stamp for my Minnesota Parks passport book. But everything single park I checked out was either “closed due to snow” or “foot traffic not recommended due to dangerous conditions.” What the hell is this? You close the parks because of snow? You’re Minnesota. You ARE snow. So that was quite disappointing.

Instead of a state park on the way home, I stopped in Duluth for dinner and to visit the Glensheen Mansion, part of a vast estate of a 20th century mining baron. It was a beautiful home, and after two days of birdwatching, I was way too dirty to be in there. They should not have let me in. But they did. And I saw the windows they had in their closets, and the crazy views of Lake Superior, and an awful lot of interpretive writing just to make sure that you, the visitor, knows that this mining baron wasn’t like the other mining barons. He was a good person and a philanthropist and definitely wasn’t someone who exploited the natural resources and labor force of a region to make millions and millions of dollars and then go on to profit off of World War I anyway. No, no, no, he would never do that. Hmmm.

His house was really pretty, though!

I like Duluth, I think it’s a pretty city, but it’s also really like a weird, midwest version of Seattle in some ways. It’s got lots of hills, it’s a major shipping port, there’s up-and-coming restaurants and arts scenes, the weather is weird, everyone there gives off the impression that they’ve got a chip on their shoulder because they live in Duluth, not Minneapolis, and they’re proud of it, you might get shanked, you get the idea. I guess that second-to-last one doesn’t really have anything to do with Seattle.

But that was my weekend trip up to the far northern reaches of Minnesota in an ill-fated attempt to see the Great Gray Owl (or a Snowy owl, for that matter). I did not succeed in my search for that specific owl, nor did I succeed in driving with a limited amount of damage, nor nor did I succeed in getting to a state park, nor nor nor did I succeed in touching bog water, but I did succeed in having a great time on my own, traveling around a new place and experiencing new things entirely on my own time and volition. And I saw a Northern Hawk Owl, which is pretty fucking cool. Really fucking cool. Like, so cool. So despite every disaster that seemed to strike, in the end, it was still, I’d say, a great success anyway.