Mark “Sparky” Stensaas visited the Superior National Forest in January and recently put together the footage for this episode of “Shooting with Sparky.” Watch as a bull moose attempts to mount another bull who’d lost its antlers. Also: twelve spruce grouse, boreal chickadees and a great gray owl.
“April is a great time to sit and watch the incredible courtship displays of ducks,” writes Sparky Stensaas on the YouTube description for this recently posted video with footage shot in 2011. The segments show the wooing antics of common mergansers, common goldeneyes, bufflehead and hooded mergansers.
“Here in northern Minnesota, the ice is just going out on the lakes and early returning male ducks are trying to impress the ladies,” notes Stensaas.
Sparky Stensaas captured this trio of red fox pups romping around on a gravel road in Carlton County on Sunday.
Mark “Sparky” Stensaas visits Tympanuchus Wildlife Management Area, about 230 miles west of Duluth, observing greater prairie chickens for his blog, the Photonaturalist.
Sparky Stensaas had a rare Canada Lynx encounter in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota on March 21.
“As I came over a rise, there it was,” Stensaas wrote on his blog, the Photonaturalist. “It saw me and bounded off the road and into the 3-foot deep snow. I stayed put thinking that it might come my way via the pine woods. And after a few tense minutes of me second-guessing my intuition, it did!”
Sparky Stensaas captured a few Northern Goshawks in flight at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth in October.
Wrenshall’s Mark “Sparky” Stensaas has had up to 19 wild turkeys at his feeder. He tells the full story on his Photonaturalist blog.
Video by Sparky Stensaas
Wrenshall’s Mark “Sparky” Stensaas is in Yellowstone. Things got interesting while he was photographing this coyote. He tells the full story on his Photonaturalist blog.
Video by Sparky Stensaas, shot two weeks ago on Spring Lake in Carlton County.
While out doing bird surveys for the Minnesota DNR, Sparky Stensaas came across a baby brown thrasher trying to swallow a foot-long garter snake.
This video was shot by Mark “Sparky” Stensaas on May 3 for his blog, the Photonaturalist. Local porcupines have moved out of places like the West Duluth Porcupine Hotel and are giving up their diet of tree bark in favor of the more scrumptious catkins of Pussy Willows. Sparky’s specific post on this is called “Porcupine Spring Snack.”
