March 2024 - January 2025 MBWeekends

~  Our 39th Season  ~


• Minnesota Birding Weekends •

Minnesota Birding Weekends continues to offer unique, modestly priced weekend (and weekday) birding tours throughout Minnesota since we originated in 1986. Since then, we've had more than 9,000 registrations (MBWeeks included), over 450 MBWeekends, and a composite list of 372 species seen in the state.


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This MBWbirds website also includes...


• Minnesota Birding Weeks

In addition to our MBWeekends, a selection of out-of-state MBWeeks continued for one

FINAL SEASON – our 35th  – in 2023-24. There have now been more than 125 MBWeeks since the first one in February 1988, with 730+ species now on our composite list.


• A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota

The 5th edition of A Birder's Guide to Minnesota has now been published and became available in early November 2022 ... along with a Second Printing with minor changes in May 2023. A series of updates has started and is now an ongoing work in progress for this newest edition: these Corrections and Additions will provide those using this book with the most accurate and up-to-date information as it becomes available. And please note that several more entries were added in August 2024.


• Birding by Hindsight

This series of 70 bird identification articles is still available in a print edition, with 100+ photographs added and new covers in the 3rd printing. These articles were originally published in The Loon, journal of the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union, 1995 - 2012.


• Minnesota Sewage Ponds

Municipal sewage ponds (also known as sewage lagoons, settling ponds, wastewater treatment ponds, etc.) are often productive birding sites. Accordingly, an expanded checklist of Minnesota’s 400+ known sewage ponds (now with a link to maps with the locations all the ponds) is included here.


• MBW Checklists

Here are checklists with the 372 species recorded on MBWeekends (all within MN) and the composite MBW list of 733 species (i.e., MBWeeks & MBWeekends combined).



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For additional information, contact: Kim Richard Eckert, eckertkr@gmail.com (email);

218 349 5953 (cell/text); 1921 W. Kent Rd., Duluth MN 55812 (U.S. mail).


Also available are GUIDING SERVICES for those interested in a group tour in Minnesota or in other states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada. (Non-Minnesota tours would be of primary interest, since the out-of-state Minnesota Birding Weeks are being discontined.)


And finally, what would any self-respecting website be without the obligatory BLOG

...especially this website which always has believed in Social-Media Distancing from Facebook and all the other nonsense out there.


MBWbirds.com

Mottled Owl

(Jerry Pruett photo)

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron

(Jerry Pruett photo)



The MBWs scheduled through September in our 39th season of

Minnesota Birding Weekends, have now been completed.

For their summaries, along with the registration status

of the remaining MBWs, see mbwbirds.com/mbweekends.html.


Also see the MBWeekends page with the information on the

Fall 2024 schedule of Duluth-based MBWednesdays;

those remainiong are scheduled for October 9 & 23.

The primary meeting time of these MBWednesdays will be at 8:30 am

– to give Twin Cities birders the option to drive up

that morning with no need for lodging).

               

~  OCTOBER 4, 2024  ~

(previous update Sept. 9)

Scott Meyer photo

  This series of Corrections and Additions continues

   to be updated, now that this guide is in its Second

   Printing – which includes several minor changes

   in the text since the First Printing, a new cover,

   and non-spiral binding).


   For the most recent updates and additional

   information on this new edition and the 2nd

   printing, see: mbwbirds.com/abgtm.html. Be

   sure to note the comments on the QR links

   to county maps (which have far more detail

   than the base maps on the pages), and on

   how to download any map in advance for use

   when you're in areas without cell service.

  

ANNOUNCING ... THE END OF AN ERA


Please note that the February 2024 South Texas MBW

(see MBWbirds.com/texas-2024.html for the summary)

was the final MBWeek, with none scheduled

for the 2024-25 season or thereafter.


After 35 seasons (beginning in February 1988),

more than 125 MBWeeks, and 733 species,

I have decided to retire from scheduling MBWeeks.


See mbwbirds.com/mbweeks.html for the summaries

of this final season of MBWeeks.


(Note, however, I still intend to do two more years

of MBWeekends – through January 2026 – to reach my goal of

completing 40 seasons of MBWs.)



IN MEMORIUM . . . A PHOTO GALLERY OF RARITIES

FROM OUR FINAL MINNESOTA BIRDING WEEK:

SOUTH TEXAS, FEBRUARY 2024


Roadside Hawk

(Jerry Pruett photo)


Gray-collard Becard

(Raymond Tervo photo)

Cattle Tyrant

(Raymond Tervo photo)

Brown Jay

(Jerry Pruett photo)


THE SET OF CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS

TO A BIRDER'S GUIDE TO MINNESOTA

WAS AGAIN UPDATED RECENTLY, ON AUGUST 12.

  


~  also seen but not photographed:  Fan-tailed Warbler  ~