This was approximately my 25th annual Christmas morning bog field trip. Every Christmas morning I leave my family with my wife's relatives (they don't miss me), as I head out to check the bogs near Floodwood in St. Louis County. Most years I head up to the Sax/Zim Bog, but some years, including this one, I checked out the fields and bogs around Floodwood. The weather was relatively warm with a mist freezing on everything. The birding was slow and most species were unremarkably common. The one exception was a large flock of about 400 Redpolls that were found along St. Vincent road NW of Floodwood along the tracks. Later I found a single, very sedentary Redpoll along Savanah Road several miles away. Nothing else was worthy of note.
One of my brother-in-laws found a cougar in November behind the Cromwell peat facility. Last year he and his crew saw a pair of cougars along Parentala Road near Highway 73 north of Floodwood. He also thought he saw a cougar cub at a den along the St. Louis River east of Highways 29 and 73 in the same area. He works in the forest and spends a lot of his free time hunting and fishing. I have found his reports credible. Steve Weston On Quigley Lake in Eagan, MN swest...@comcast.net ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
