Last Sunday our kids' school had an open house to celebrate Catholic Schools Week. Being in 7th and 8th grades they each had to do a huge project and paper to be displayed at school. John, the 7th grader did his science project titled "Do Parabolas Affect Wireless Signals?". He built a parabola using a bendable ruler covered with smooth foil and string to bend the ruler. He moved the parabola a progression of distances from the wireless antenna and used his PSP to measure the signal strength. John did a terrific job on his experiment, poster board and paper!
Molly's 8th grade social studies project was on Germany. She also did a poster board and an extensive paper on Germany- it's history, culture, economy, industry, architecture and language. She worked so hard on her paper. I am so very proud of them both. Molly goes off to public high school next year, and John the year after that. They are both well-prepared and I am so excited to see where their futures take them.
I don't have any bird pictures to post, but here is Buddy, the amazing rabbit, balancing an empty pop bottle on his back! Doesn't he look happy? (NOOO!) And here's another shot of Buddy after we trimmed his claws. Really- if he had opposable thumbs we'd all be dead, or at least maimed!
It was an awesome day. It started out cold, 4 degrees above in Duluth but MINUS 4 in Floodwood, the town a few miles from where we started birding. The temps stayed low but my spirits were high. Mike our guide from Duluth was terrific. He knows his birds and he knows where the birds are in this area. Laura Erickson from 
It didn't take long for Mike to find my first lifer of the day- a black-backed woodpecker!! Our first boreal species. The picture is pretty fuzzy, but if you click on it to enlarge it you can see the yellow cap telling us that this is a male. The rusty area on the trunk shows where the bird had scaled the bark looking for insects below it. We saw this bird from the road.
Not long after we got there Mike did a little pishing and out flew a pair of boreal chickadees! Life bird number 4!!! They were mixed in with a flock of black capped chickadees so I got to hear both songs. What a cool chance to compare the similar songs of the two chickadee species. While we were listening to the chickadees this beauty flew in- Life bird number 5!!! A female white-winged crossbill! She perched at the tip of this spruce and sang her heart out. Beautiful songster! Driving out of the Sax-Zim we stopped at a residence with a feeder and saw a lone evening grosbeak- life bird number 6!!
We headed back toward Duluth, stopping at an area with known sightings of a northern hawk owl. It didn't take Mike long to find it hunting a field behind a coffee shop on a busy highway! It seemed strange to find this rare sighting in such a location but it was actively and successfully hunting that field.
As we watched, it flew down and nabbed a vole. Everyone gasped as it was such a treat to see this magnificent owl catch and eat it's prey. The picture above is right before it launched itself after the vole. 
Mmm...nice tastey vole!
and without a head!
After the thrill of the northern hawk owl we drove back into Duluth to Canal Park to check out the water birds. There were lots of herring gulls (yawn) but no unsusal gull species hanging with them.
We did see quite a few common goldeneyes though- life bird number 7!! Floating in among them was a pair of harlequin ducks- life bird number 8!! I never would have been able to pick them out of the bunch without the use of a spotting scope.
Can you see it? On top of the bundles of re-bar, stacked like Lincoln logs. Down in an industrial area of the harbor, with freeways on two sides. My life bird number 9!!
Seeing this bird is my most thrilling experience birding. Ever. Period. 
What a way to end a perfect day of birding.
