Western Minnesota River Valley Day Trip

For Minnesota chasers, mention the Minnesota River valley and most will start to mutter a string of four letter words about how that damn dirty ditch has screwed up an awesome intercept or caused a chaser to miss a tornado by just a few minutes. The area from the Lac Qui Parle refuge all the way to Mankato has a reputation for being a real pain to deal with. In 2002, I nearly got eaten by small southeast moving tornado near Belleview, MN due to a bad map showing a river crossing which does not exist.

So you get the idea. I'm not a real lover of the river during chase season. However, I thought I would see if some of the raptor viewing was as good as I had heard with highs forecasted to push 70 degrees on the 2nd of November, I couldn't pass it up. My original plan was to head out on 7 to Montevideo but they still don't have the road open from 25 going west. Grrrr. They are still diverting all traffic down to 212 so off I went to Renville, MN then headed south to the river.

You really don't realize how big and deep this thing is until you either drop in or find a high point to look over the whole valley. This shot was taken near Granite Falls, MN looking east/southeast.


Anyhow, my journey through the rural roads running parallel to the river started off in Renville county and continued upstream to about half way between Granite Falls and Montevideo.


A slough full of swans above the ridges in the flat farm country. Once you get out off the river valley, this area is about as flat as it can get and is a chasers paradise as pretty much ever section is squared off with well maintained gravel roads.

The first stop of the day was at the Renville county park where the bed rock lines the banks of the river. It's hard to remember this is in western MN and not up north looking around. We are going to make a point of coming back to camp at this park next spring. Simply beautiful.


Raccoon tracks in the mud. I'll take dealing with these masked garbage can raiders on a camping trip over the bears up north anytime.

Anyhow, on with some birds. Although not plentiful in terms of numbers, the red tails riding the thermals along the ridge tops with the light winds were all beautiful mature birds.

It was really frustrating as I could never get one to soar with the sun shining on the bird. They always ended up with the sun behind or off to the immediate right.


There were a few eagles around but far fewer than I was expecting. Pretty sure a lot have moved down river towards the Mississippi and the wintering grounds after last Sunday's storm.

The final count for the day was 2 mature bald eagles, 1 juvenile bald eagle, 2 turkey vultures, 9 red tail hawks and 1 broad wing hawk. More important were the 2 bald eagle nests I marked with the GPS to come back and check on next spring while waiting for the cap to break on a chase day.

This fire was burning directly south of Granite Falls off highway 23. I didn't think much of it until I stopped at Subway for lunch and came out to my car being covered with ash! I'm thinking it had to have been some type of massive leaf fire to put that much ash into the air. Crazy.

Playing around with a shot up road sign and the sun amongst the weave of power lines just northwest of Granite Falls.


Best campaign sign of the year. This ranks right up there with Dick Mussel who was one of our city councilmen when I lived in Anoka. Maybe his campaign slogan should be "WTF? VFF!!" (Vote For Fluck...get it?)

One last red tail makes a departure from it's roost east of Wilmar on the way home.

Our favorite photos from the weekend

A busy weekend mixed with over 12 off road miles on the bike and another 6 on foot. Managed to get some stuff done around the house in between and even got some more done on the June 7th chapter of the Storms of 2008 production (which should be ready for music scoring this week.

Wax worms and peanut butter

Yep...one of the few remaining nice days out. Cailyn and I took advantage by hooking a few sunfish one last time and having a picnic lunch while watching some eagles, kestrels, and some very skittish squirrels. One red tail did manage to sit tight long enough for shot but I really need to invest in a window mount.

Our first day at Hawk Ridge

Those of you who are into watching raptors and enjoy the fall migration, you know what the months of September and October mean each year. The skies will fill with flocks of birds heading south in search of warmer roosts with plentiful food. Where we live we are fortunate to be smack in the middle of the Mississippi flyway. Some of my best memories growing up were spent with my dad standing on the hillside along a slough waiting for a flock of ducks to pass by. As the years have passed, I really don't have the drive to hunt as I did but I still love to be out in the woods and prairies this time of year.

One of the special areas relatively close to home (a couple of hours) is the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth, MN. The unique position of this ridge in relation to Lake Superior acts as a funnel for migrating birds to pass through a narrow passage. Seeing over 1000 raptors in a day is not uncommon. Melinda and I pre-scouted this area on our way home from camping a couple of weeks ago and I decided I needed to go back when the weather conditions were favorable. West to northwest winds push the birds towards the big lake and they will not cross it. They will stay over the land mass and ride the rising wind currents being forced upwards by the steep ridge running parallel to the lake. (For the weather weenies reading, yes this is a great area to also experience oragraphically enhanced lake effect snows in the winter also.) So after keeping close tabs on the weather models for a while, it looked like there was going to be a three day stint of westerly winds behind a cold front. The middle day, Wednesday October 15th, got the nod as the winds would be quite strong forcing the birds to the leeward side of the ridge (or so I thought). Cullen and I made the trip up leaving about 8am from home and after getting distracted by a mature bald eagle in Milaca and a couple of beautiful broadwings, we arrived at Hawk Ridge about 10:30. COLD!!! Just as we expected sowe donned the winter gear, grabbed the cams and headed up to a nice flat rocky overlook Melinda and I had found earlier. The dark skies and cold wind were not helping things as fas as seeing birds move but we had brought the laptop with and a quick check of the sat loop showed there would be a window of a couple of hours sun and good light. Bottom line is the clouds did break, the birds flew, and we had a great day. A lot of the birds stayed to the west and just out of camera range. We were using 2x converters on both the still and vid cams giving us about a 400mm focal length but you really need 800mm to do this right. Anyhow, the highlight was getting to see an Osprey and Cullen got to check out the banding station where the sharp shinned hawks were plentiful.

A missed opportunity & a Friday backyard chase?

Great opportunity for an awesome shot of a broad winged hawk this afternoon. Yeah, too bad I forgot I had cranked up the ISO on the cam to 1600 the other night then left it there. I do this over and over....you think I would learn. Click on the image to see what I mean.
Using Photoshop in a weak attempt to make lemonade out of a lemon.

One week from heading up north for the big show. The GFS is pissing me off as it really wants to develop a strong system to the west keeping the winds out of the south meaning Melinda and I won't see much (compared to a west or northwest wind). It will make for warmer October camping but the birds won't get funneled in a long the lake.

Tomorrow may hold some promise for another late season t-storm day. Best dynamics are waaay north in the trees but if a cell can pop in the St Cloud / Little Falls area, the 850mb/700mb crossover doesn't look too bad for some lower level shear. I suspect the good old SPC will expand the slight down into the IA/MN border region on the new SWODY1.