Tag Archives: minnesota

DNR implements early season walleye closure on Little Cut Foot Sioux

Posted on by
Reply

There likely will be more closures to come, thanks to a late spring that has delayed walleye spawning, but the Department of Natural Resources announced today that a portion of Little Cut Foot Sioux Lake in Itasca County will be closed from May 11 to May 17 because of high concentrations of spawning walleyes.

The closure affects an an area near the egg collection operation on Little Cut Foot Sioux  and extends from Williams Narrows upstream through the First River Flowage up to Egg Lake.

No fishing will be allowed during this period in the specified area. Signs will be posted at the narrows and other access points within the closed area.

“The closure is necessary to protect adult walleye that have concentrated around the spawning site where the DNR’s egg collection operation is located,” said Chris Kavanaugh, Grand Rapids area fisheries manager. “It’s always a difficult decision to close the area and restrict recreational opportunities, but our first responsibility is to the long-term health of the fishery. We considered the safeguard offered with the protected slot limit, but felt the risk of overharvest was too high.”

Henry Drewes, regional fisheries supervisor for the DNR in Bemidji, said the agency will decide early this coming week whether to implement any temporary closures in northwest Minnesota. Stay tuned.

Great gray owls take center stage in Sunday’s Northland Outdoors

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re a fan of great gray owls — and it’s hard to not be fascinated by these magnificent birds from the north — you’re going to want to check out Sunday’s section of Northland Outdoors in the Grand Forks Herald or the photo gallery that will appear on the Herald’s website.

Josh James, a student at the University of Minnesota-Crookston, took this striking close-up photo of a great gray owl recently during an excursion to trap and band the birds near Roseau, Minn.

Tim Driscoll, director of the Grand Forks-based Urban Raptor Research Project, and a group of students from the University of Minnesota-Crookston made half a dozen trips to northwest Minnesota this winter to capture and band great gray owls.

Driscoll also teaches a course in raptor ecology at UMC.

The owls, which normally spend their winters in Canada, converged on northwest Minnesota in big bunches this winter after their food supplies ran low farther north. This “irruption,” as it’s known in scientific terms, occurs every few years.

The influx of owls provided an opportunity for Driscoll, who has a federal permit to trap and band owls and other raptors, and his students to catch and band several great grays, along with two northern hawk owls, at a site north of Roseau, Minn., that is a traditional hotspot for the birds, especially during irruptive years such as this.

The banding work also allowed the students to take up-close-and-personal photos of the owls — an opportunity most photographers rarely get — and Driscoll’s students generously agreed to share several of their images with the Herald.

Here’s just one of the photos you’ll see in Sunday’s two-page spread on the owls.

 

Great gray owl ‘irruption’ appears to be winding down

Posted on by
Reply

The reports I’ve gotten from birding enthusiasts in the past few days indicate the influx of great gray owls that converged on parts of northwest Minnesota appears to be winding down as the birds move back north.

That being said, the “invasion” of owls moving down from Canada was big news in the bird world, and it provided some great viewing opportunities for both expert and novice birders alike.

In birding terms, the invasion was an “irruption,” a phenomenon that occurs when numbers of a particular species move into an area. In the case of the great gray owls, the birds converged on northwest Minnesota after supplies of the mice, moles and other small rodents they depend on for food ran short in Canada. And according to reports from wildlife managers, northwest Minnesota had a particularly abundant supply of small mammals for the owls to feast on this winter.

Some friends and I spent a few days on Oak Island of the Northwest Angle in late February and saw numbers of owls near Sprague, Man., just across the border. The owls seemed to be favoring areas that provided trees for perching, but with enough open habitat to offer a clear view of small critters scurrying on or under the snow. Once we got closer to the Northwest Angle, where the terrain is more heavily forested, the number of owls we saw declined.

Beth Siverhus of Warroad, Minn., photographed this great gray owl perched atop a flagpole north of Warroad earlier this week. She titled the photo “U.S. of O(wl).”

Beth Siverhus, an avid birdwatcher and amateur photographer from Warroad, Minn., has spent a lot of time watching and photographing owls during the past few weeks and says the number of birds she’s seeing has declined as the owls move back north. Siverhus, who also is a certified wildlife rehabilitator, said she knows of four owls killed by vehicle collisions, one that was shot and another that died of unknown causes. In every case, she said, the owls were in good physical condition, which suggests they were finding ample food supplies during their time in northwest Minnesota.

Siverhus got some excellent owl photos during the recent irruption, including this shot of an owl perched atop a flag along Roseau County Road 137 north of Warroad. She titled the photo “U.S. of O(wl).”