September is definitely one of the best months to be outside in Minnesota. The weather is (typically) starting to cool off and the hours of daylight each day is hardly getting shorter -at least not noticeably yet. I started off the month with an early morning visit to the park arriving about 7am. Right off the bat I noticed a very interesting bird -that at the time I had no clue of what it could be, only that it was likely some Warbler I'm not yet familiar with. I caught a decent picture of it hoping around in a grapevine and decided I would try to ID it later on.
Well, about this time I started getting too busy at work and even at home and started letting all my park photos pile up quickly on my desktop. I am actually writing this post much later and as it so happens I would see this species one more time -making me really wonder what the heck it was. After coming back to it periodically, I've determined that it is in fact a Magnolia Warbler! And more precisely, it is an immature in "Non-breeding Plumage" which was yet another aspect making it more difficult to identify. The great thing about the internet as it relates to birding, is that once you get an idea of what something "might be," you can just look up hundreds of other images for comparison to yours. And funny enough when I did, that the photo that resembled mine the most came from a fellow birder in my same area:
Ecobirder. The next thing I saw I was really not expecting, and it only was there for a split second, making it seem all that more unique.
As I was rounding the west side of the park near the outfields of the baseball diamonds. I caught a larger bird out of the corner of my eye land in a tall dead tree high up above me. I instinctively swung around to snap a photo and realized it was an American Kestral! I've not positively ID'd one at the park since April of 2011 so it was quite a nice sighting. Then as soon as he had landed, he took off and I was unable to follow where he went. I didn't even have a chance for a better photo but still very cool to have seen one again! Later on the north end of the park, a Doe had wandered out onto the trail and was lazily grazing along the edges. She was far up ahead of me and I just had a feeling that maybe some Fawns were with her.
Sure enough they too popped out onto the trail and this is when I decided to try and get in closer. Both mom and the kids were just curious enough about me to let me approach fairly close and let me and even other people coming by just watch them for a while. I ended up taking a whole lot of photos of just one or the other Fawn as they munched on everything green, but this was my favorite photo of the day.
Well, about this time I started getting too busy at work and even at home and started letting all my park photos pile up quickly on my desktop. I am actually writing this post much later and as it so happens I would see this species one more time -making me really wonder what the heck it was. After coming back to it periodically, I've determined that it is in fact a Magnolia Warbler! And more precisely, it is an immature in "Non-breeding Plumage" which was yet another aspect making it more difficult to identify. The great thing about the internet as it relates to birding, is that once you get an idea of what something "might be," you can just look up hundreds of other images for comparison to yours. And funny enough when I did, that the photo that resembled mine the most came from a fellow birder in my same area: Ecobirder. The next thing I saw I was really not expecting, and it only was there for a split second, making it seem all that more unique. 
As I was rounding the west side of the park near the outfields of the baseball diamonds. I caught a larger bird out of the corner of my eye land in a tall dead tree high up above me. I instinctively swung around to snap a photo and realized it was an American Kestral! I've not positively ID'd one at the park since April of 2011 so it was quite a nice sighting. Then as soon as he had landed, he took off and I was unable to follow where he went. I didn't even have a chance for a better photo but still very cool to have seen one again! Later on the north end of the park, a Doe had wandered out onto the trail and was lazily grazing along the edges. She was far up ahead of me and I just had a feeling that maybe some Fawns were with her. 
Sure enough they too popped out onto the trail and this is when I decided to try and get in closer. Both mom and the kids were just curious enough about me to let me approach fairly close and let me and even other people coming by just watch them for a while. I ended up taking a whole lot of photos of just one or the other Fawn as they munched on everything green, but this was my favorite photo of the day.
This blog is very enjoyable, very informative very well written and the photos are outstanding. Happy I came across it while researching the Palmer lake Basin in Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn park area of Minnesota.
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