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Winter Trumpeter Swan Tours

As we drove north out of Minneapolis, Minnesota in mid-January I spotted a flock of large white birds. I knew immediately by the long length of their necks that they were swans. When my wife Diane stopped the car at a gas station I could hear their plaintive calls; whoo - whoo - whoo.

We followed the flock to the Mississippi River, where we saw hundreds of giant Canada geese, dozens of mallards, and dozens of the large beautiful trumpeter swans - the most I had ever seen in my life outside of North Dakota. And these were landing, resting, displaying and feeding within 30 yards of where I stood with my camera.

Diane and my youngest daughter Tawnya watched the birds while I took pictures for the next hour, and got some great shots.

I also met several other photographers who were interested in joining me for our Bald Eagle, Elk, Turkey, Upland Sandpiper and birding tours. I think half the fun of being a nature lover is sharing the experience with other nature lovers. I hope you will consider joining us on one of our tours.

We took our first trip to Read's Landing in southern Minnesota to see the wintering bald eagles on Lake Pepin and the Mississippi river in the mid 1980's; and we have taken the trip at least every other year since then. Heading south out of St. Paul, Minnesota we usually take US Highway 52 to State Highway 50, east to US Highway 61 and follow it south through the town of Red Wing and the scenic bluff and coulee country of the Mississippi River.

Bald eagles can often be seen from Red Wing to Winona, but the highest concentrations of the these magnificent birds are generally seen from Lake City to Wabasha, where the National Eagle Center is located. The viewing areas just north of Read's Landing, overlooking beautiful Lake Pepin, are where you are often to find tourists and birders using binoculars to locate eagles on the ice or perched in the trees along the edge of the lake. On weekends you may also find volunteers from the Eagle Center with their spotting scopes, which they will gladly let you use to look at the eagles.

The weather often dictates how many eagles spend the winter in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. When cold weather causes the northern lakes and rivers to freeze up, many eagles migrate to Lake Pepin, which stays open year round. They begin arriving in early November, with peak numbers from December through March.

We have seen as many as 157 eagles in one day between Lake City and Wabasha, with most of them seen from the viewing areas just north of Read's Landing. During the morning and early evening you may see the birds soaring over the river, and diving to snatch fish from the river. During middy they often sit on the ice or perch in the trees.

You should always have a good pair of 7 power or better binoculars or a spotting scope on this trip, and a camera with at least a 200mm lens (400mm or stronger is best) so you can get a good view of the eagles. Be sure to look west into the tops of the trees at the south entrance to Read's Landing. If you look carefully you will see a large eagles nest in one of the trees.

You should also look for migrating tundra swans and diver ducks, from south of Lake City to La Crosse Wisconsin. We often see common goldeneyes and common mergansers on the river too. Alma, Wisconsin is a good place to look for tundra swans, as are the lakes and ponds just north of I-90 on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi river.

The best time for tundra swans will be the last weekend of November through December, and through February for trumpeter swans and bald eagles.

Click here for current Bald Eagle and Swan Sightings and Tour information.

For Father's Day my daughter Tawnya and my wife Diane took me to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in north Minneapolis. I went primarily to look for and photograph wild flowers, and we found several of them, many of which I had never seen before. But, one of the first things I saw was a male Scarlet Tanager. It was the first one my wife and daughter had ever seen, and the first one I had seen in about 40 years.

I saw red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays. I also took several photos of wild flowers, a far off shot of the tanager, and it was a great day.

If you are a bird or flower lover this is a little slice of "paradise" in the city. The area does have the Minnesota State Flower, the showy lady's slipper, and I saw my first yellow flag iris, false indigo and several other flowers.

During the first and second weekends of July we drove down toward Rochester, MN, where we saw male indigo buntings, meadowlarks, my first male dickcissel, and some birds I have yet to identify. I can always count on the indigo buntings in this one specific area. We also saw a couple of bald eagle nests, with the adult birds sitting in the tree, and the downy-headed chicks popping there head above the side the nest.

On our way back to the Twin Cities we often stop at several little known wildflower areas, and at Big Woods & Frontenac State Parks where we look for and photograph such wildflowers as the lilac colored large-beard tongue (pentsemon), yellow hoary puccoon, blue-eyed grass, purple asters, purple harebells, purple cow vetch, pink crown vetch, yellow birds-foot trefoil, yellow violet, Trout Lily, and the rare Minnesota Trout Lily which is indigenous to this area.

If you are a wildflower enthusiast, these tours have a wide variety of flowers. Why not join us on one of these trips? 

During the third weekend of September we drove southeast out of St. Paul, MN on US Highway 52, then east on State Highway 50 to Redwing, then south along US Highway 61 to Frontenac State Park. The leaves were just starting to turn along the bluffs and coulees of the Mississippi River, hinting of the fall colors of scarlet, red, orange, yellow and green that would bathe the hills within a few weeks.

South of Weaver we doubled back on US Highway 61 and took State Highway 74 to the Whitewater Wildlife Management Area, which is made up of towering wooded bluffs, marshes, riparian and a variety of other wetland habitats.

The 2,700-acre park and the several thousand acres of the Wildlife Management Area that surround it feature scenic overlooks and excellent trout fishing in the spring fed Whitewater River and Trout Run Creek. The area in and around the Wildlife Area and the State Park is home to about 50 species of mammals and 250 species of birds.

In the spring you can listen and look for the rare Louisiana waterthrush. Of Minnesota's rare animals and plants, 43 percent live in the blufflands in and around this area. Thirty-five species of migrant neotropical birds have been recorded in the park.

This area is home to the rare Leedy's Roseroot (Sedum integrifolium ssp. Leedyi), a cliffside wildflower found only in six locations in two widely separated states. Two populations are in upstate New York, a large population on the shores of Seneca Lake and a single plant at Watkins Glen. The other four populations of several thousand plants each are found in Fillmore and Olmstead Counties, Minnesota.

The dirt road through the north part of the Management Area follows the lower end of the Whitewater River, which flows through wet prairies and marshes. The southern part of the Management area and the State Park is made up mostly of towering wooded bluffs and ravines. In addition there are several water impoundments that provide habitat for a wide variety of wading and shorebirds, including several species of ducks and Canada geese. In the fall tundra swans are often found on the marshes. There are also abundant wild turkey, ruffed grouse, ring-necked pheasant and occasionally gray partridge in the area.

One of the favorite spring rituals here, from late March through early June, is looking for wild turkeys within a few hours of sunrise, to watch the toms show off the red, white and blue colors of their heads, fan their tails and strut as they gobble, spit and boom to attract the hens during the mating season.

You can also look for and listen to male ruffed grouse as they stand on a log and rapidly flap their wings as they "drum" to proclaim dominance and attract females. While many people don't know it, male ring-necked pheasants also drum by flapping their wings, often after they crow shortly after sunrise to attract females in the spring.

As we drove slowly down the road in the northern part of the valley, alongside the river and several marshes, we saw painted turtles sunning themselves on logs, one large snapping turtle, Canada geese, great blue herons, great egrets, a pair or tundra swans, and a red-tailed hawk. In the southern part of the valley we saw goldfinches, a pine siskin and several eastern bluebirds. We also saw several species of beautiful blue and purple asters, and yellow goldenrods still in bloom.

We will make it a point to come back when the fall bird migration is in full swing, when you can see tundra swans, several species of ducks, hawks, bald and golden eagles, and several species of songbirds.  

In early September we began our Elk Bugling Tours near Rochester, Minnesota. There were about 200 bull elk stripping the velvet from their antlers, and just beginning to bugle. Listening to all those elk bugling was a fantastic experience, evoking memories of a more primitive time in man's existence.

We also watched several pairs of bull elk involved in sparring and fights, and participating in dominance displays; where two bulls walk side by side, with their noses pointed upward so their heads are parallel to the ground. The bulls then turn their heads slightly away form each other so they don't have eye contact with each other. After walking for 20-100 yards one of the bulls often turns away from the other bull, and then begins to walk back in the other direction, followed closely by the other bull.

This often continues for several minutes, until one of the bulls defeats the other, or they get interrupted by another bull, or they actually make contact, at which time they may bob their head and antlers at each other, and may actually touch antlers and begin a sparring match.

Sparring matches may just break off my mutual consent, or one of the bulls may prevail, at which point the other bull may turn tail and run, sometimes being pursued by the other bull.

There were also hundreds of young elk calves, in colors ranging from white, to cream, to light gold and tawny brown. They often run, jump and skip around as they play in the early morning or late afternoon hours.

On the way back to Minneapolis and St. Paul we stopped by a friend's farm, where we often look and dig for fossils along the riverbed flowing through his property, including shells of snails. There are also strange fossils that look like branched tree twigs, but which are actually the petrified remains of burrows that worms left in the earth several thousand years ago. And, where the highway cuts through a large hill on his property, we often find petrified clams and ammonites in the exposed sandstone layers of the hill.

If you are interested in joining us on any of these tours contact us at TRMichels@yahoo.com.

During the last weekend of August we decided to check out the Native American Indian Petroglyphs (rock carvings) in southeast Minnesota near the little town of Jeffers, where there is a remnant of tallgrass prairie with an abundance of wildflowers, then head over to Pipestone National Monument to see where the red stone for Native American Indian Peace Pipes is quarried, and then head south to Blue Mounds State Park where there is a herd of buffalo on a large remnant of tall grass prairie and river bottom woodlands, and also some Native American Indian architecture.

Jeffers, Minnesota is about 150 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul, a few miles west of the intersection of MN State Hwy. 30 and US 71, west of Lake Shetek State Park and the Des Moines River.

As we pulled into the entrance to the Jeffers State Historic Site it didn't look very impressive. A large wooden and concrete building sat in the middle of a wide-open grassy prairie, with one or two small trees visible, and some exposed patches of bare rock. As we parked the car in the gravel parking lot I noticed the tall grass prairie was marked with white plaques designating several species of wild flowers, many of which were still in bloom.

I eagerly headed toward the plaques, anxious to find flowers I had never seen before. There were several species of goldenrod, 4-5 species of blue or purple asters, rough blazingstar, leadplant, 2-3 species of sunfower, prickly pear cactus, and several other flowers, many of them in brilliant colors. I took several pictures, which I will add to the wildflower section of our Outdoor Photography Pages. There are also numerous species of grasses, including switchgrass, big blue stem, small bluestem, buffalo grass, cordgrass, sideoats grama, dropseed and others.

According to the naturalist there are also bobwhite, ring-necked pheasants, bobolink, dickcissles, and several species of sparrows that frequent the prairie of about 1600 acres. She also informed me they only receive about 12,000 visitors a year, meaning it never crowded.

Eventually we made our way along the mowed path through the grasses and flowers to the exposed underlying cap of rock, about a quarter of a mile from the visitor center. Once we reached the flat rocks we noticed that not only were they scarred by the action of the glaciers that had moved through the area thousands of year ago, but in some places you could see ripples in the rock, where the sand of an ancient sea had petrified while preserving the undulations of a beach or sea bed.

And then there were the rock carvings, literally hundreds of them that were in excess of 5000 years old, and from the way they were placed on top of each other, some showing more wear than others, they had obviously been made over a span of several generations. There were carvings of thunderbirds, turtles, deer, elk, buffalo, stick figures of humans, and numerous symbols. There were also several impressions of hands, probably a way of the carver leaving his signature on his carvings.

From viewing other such carvings I suspect the carvings were not so much "carved" into the rock as one would hammer a chisel into wood an a low angle, but rather these rock carvings were the result of pounding a hard small pointed or blunt object, such as antler or bone, to make individual dots into the rock, with 3-5 dots each required to make a thin line. One can only imagine how time consuming and tedious it must have been to hammer out some of the larger or more complex carvings.

We took several pictures of the carvings, that I hope turn out, because the light was overhead. I suspect the carvings would show up better with a low sun, so that a shadow would be cast on their depressions. For this reason it is suggested that the carvings be viewed in the early morning or late afternoon hours, or during the winter when the sun is low in the sky.

As we left Jeffers and headed toward our next destination, Pipestone, Minnesota and the Sioux Quartzite quarries, we all agreed that the stop at Jeffers to see the carvings had been will worth the trip, In fact, my 20 year old daughter Tawnya said she would like to go back in early winter, when we could make out the carvings more easily. This is a great destination for anyone interested in Minnesota or Native American History.

We all agreed that the tall grass prairie with its abundant wildflowers was an added bonus to a fascinating destination. For those interested in wildflowers this has to be one of the premiere dry tallgrass prairie wildflower locations in Minnesota. 

Pipestone National Monument is located just outside of the town of Pipestone, in southwest Minnesota. The site is on a Sioux quartzite prairie, which the Nature Conservancy considers a unique, rare and threatened habitat that is only found in the upper Midwest. Underneath the layers of quartzite is the hardened red clay known as Pipestone, which is used to make the ceremonial pipes used by many early Native American Indian Tribes.

The prairie is home to 154 species of plants, 133 of which are native. Several of the native grasses, such as big and little bluestem are in display in the visitors center, which also houses a display of various types of rocks on the site, an exhaustive display of Native American Pipes, and a museum of Native American Indian culture in the area.

An interesting feature of the center are several stalls where Native American pipe makers actually carve the bowls for pipes from the red Pipestone and carve the stems for the pipes from different species of wood, one of which is often preferred (Sumac) because it is often soft in the middle, making it easy to create the hollow tube necessary for the pipe stem.

The carver I spoke to said he was a third generation Lakota (often referred to as Sioux by many people, and referred to as Dakota by Midwesterners) who lived nearby. He told me that although Pipestone is naturally hardened clay, it is soft enough to be carved with a sharpened piece of rock, flint, bone or antler; or metal. Listening to his explanation of how the rock was quarried, carved into pipes, and was traded was extremely interesting. I suggest that anyone who stops here and sees a carver take time to ask them about their craft.

As we left the visitor center and walked across the prairie I noticed several wildflowers, some of which I had seen at the Jeffers Petroglyph site, and some I had not seen before. I took several pictures, which will be posted on the Wildflower pages on the T.R. Michels Outdoor Photography web site.

I also saw huge cracks or fissures in the rock underlying the grasses of the prairie, with piles of broken-up lrock near the fissures. Looking into these holes I could see several layers of rock, which I assumed were Sioux quartzite. The bottom of the holes was often strewn with more broken up rock, some of which was reddish in color. The bottom of many of the holes were covered with stagnant water, probably from recent rains or ground water.

I didn't realize these holes or fissures were the Pipestone quarries, until I heard the sound of a sledge hammer coming from one of them, and looked into it to see a heavyset dark-haired, dark-skinned man swinging a sledge as he broke up layers of quartzite.

When he saw me watching him he stopped a minute, and I commented that it looked like a lot of hard work. He said it was, and added that he needed a break and a drink of water. As we continued to talk he informed he was an Objibwa (often referred to as a Chippewa), and said that while many Native Americans quarried the rock to sell, others quarried and carved it, and others only carved it.

He told me that while the rock sold for a substantial price, the real money was in making pipes, which were then sold, or bartered for antlers, skins or furs that were often used to make ceremonial clothing. Again, taking time to ask questions provided me with a valuable and informative lesson on Native American History and practices.

The prairie of this site has approximately 50 species of grasses including bluestem, cordgrass, brome, threeawn, grama and dropgrass. In addition there are approximately 70 species of forbs (wildflowers); two species of sedges, eight species of woody shrubs; and one species each of fern, quillwort, spikerush and spikemoss.

Over 100 species of birds have been recorded here, including bobolink, western meadowlark, sedge wren, cedar waxwing, yellow-headed blackbird, broad-winged and Swainsons' hawks, common bobwite, and common yellowthroat.

As a result of the fantastic array of native flora and fauna this, and the geology and history of the site, Pipestone National Monument should be on the "must see" list of American and Native American history buffs, birders and wildflower enthusiasts.  

As we left Pipestone, MN we headed south on US Hwy. 75, about 18 miles to the turn-off to Blue Mounds State Park At the visitor center we bought a yearly State Park Permit, and I inquired where I could find the buffalo (properly called bison), about bird sightings, and other features of the park.

I was told that one of the bison herds was near the road a little farther into the park. I was also informed that there had been recent sightings of many birds associated with western Minnesota, and that the Blue Mound itself (a large cliff of Sioux quartzite, which appeared blue from a distance as seen by the settlers) could be viewed by driving around to the south entrance to the park.

Just as the park rangers had said there was a herd of about 30 bison near the road, complete with a couple of large bulls and several small, cute calves. I took several pictures of the herd, then walked across the tall grass prairie, noticing grasses and wildflowers I had seen at both Jeffers and Pipestone. Because it was getting late we didn't take time to explore the parks two lakes and oak woods. I knew, we would be back, but we did drive around to the south entrance to see the cliffs.

Driving up the road leading to the interpretative center at the top of the cliff we saw several small quarries of green, yellow, orange, red and almost purple rock. We parked the car in the lot and hiked a trail that led down the cliff through a burr oak woods.

As we followed the trail it seemed unreal to be walking through a hardwood forest that was literally strewn with large chunks of rocks, some of them as big as a garage. The trail wound across the face of the cliff, where we saw several species of wildflowers and grasses. In places the trails led us to the edge of the cliff, where we could see the surrounding prairie and farmland for miles.

As we continued to follow the trail it led back up to the top of the cliff, where I saw a western kingbird and several species of sparrows I could not identify. Along the top of the cliff we came across a 1,250-foot low rock wall, laid out so that it lines up with the rising and setting of the sun on the summer and fall equinox.

There seems to be some skepticism by the local historical society that this wall could have been made by Native Americans. However, after seeing the Medicine Wheel on top of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, which also has lines of rock which point to the rising and setting of the sun on those same days, there is little doubt in my mind.

Along with its vast array of native tall grass prairie wild flowers (over 100), over 200 species of birds have been sighted in the park. It is the most reliable place in the state to view the blue grosbeak, and it is the only place in the state where Brewer's sparrow has been seen. Other notable birds include broad-winged, Swainson's and rough-legged hawks; merlin, peregrine and prairie falcon; American avocet and several sandpipers.

Although we did get to visit three natural history, scenic, birding and wildflower areas in one day, I suggest anyone interested in wildflowers, and especially birds, make this a two-day trip. Jeffers should be seen during the early morning hours in the spring or fall, when there are abundant wildflowers blooming, when the petroglyphs are easily seen, and when the birds are most active and likely to be singing, especially in the spring. Then I would stay in a motel in Pipestone, and spend two days visiting the Pipestone prairies and quarries, and Blue Mound State Park with its variety of terrain and habitat, where you can look for birds and wildflowers.

Why not join us on a 1 or 2 day tour of this area? For information contact TRMichels@Yahoo.com

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