April 2023 - February 2024 MBWeekends & MBWeeks
~ Our 38th Season ~
• Minnesota Birding Weekends ~ 2023-24 Season
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 nearly 9,800 MBW registrations (MBWeeks included), 440+ MBWeekends, and a composite list of 371 species seen in the state.
• Minnesota Birding Weeks ~ 2023-24 Season
In addition to our MBWeekends, our schedule of out-of-state MBWeeks has now resumed after a limited selection of trips during the past 3 years due to Covid. There have now been more than 120 MBWeeks since the first one in February 1988, with over 720 species now on our composite list. And note the very modest cost of MBWeeks – typically only about a half the cost of similar tours offered by others!
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This MBWbirds website also includes...
• A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota updates
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 as of May 20. A series of updates has now started and becomes 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.
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.
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.
Here are checklists with the 371 species recorded on MBWeekends (all within MN) and the composite MBW list of 727 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 personal or group tour – in Minnesota or other states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada.
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
Yellow-billed Loon
Winter California
MBWeek
January 2023
(Rose Shea photo)
Black-legged Kittiwake
Beltrami MBWeekend June 2023
(Rose Shea photo)
WHAT'S NEW IN THIS and RECENT UPDATES . . .
• Our 38th season of MBWs continued this month with two Tofte-based
North Shore MBWeekends, and the combined summary of these is at
mbwbirds.com/tofte.html. Also see mbwbirds.com/mbweekends.html
and mbwbirds.com/mbweeks.html for the summaries, registration
status, and other information on all the MBWs on this year's schedule
. . .and note the 2024-25 schedule of MBWs (our 39th season!) will be
published on December 31, with registrations starting on January 1.
~ NOVEMBER 9, 2023 ~
(previous update October 26)
Scott Meyer photo
• This website continues to be dedicated to the
memory of Bob Russell. Please see: mbwbirds.com/blog.html.
• The continuing series of Corrections and
Additions for A Birder's Guide to Minnesota
has been updated recently, now that it is in
its Second Printing (which includes several
minor changes in the text, 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.