Donald Mitchell forwarded a post by Daryl Christensen to the Wisbirdnet listserve that he thought might be interesting to readers of quietnorth. I recieved permission Daryl to post excerpts from his post. I am actually going to post the second half of the post as it concerns the Vilas County area...

"....It was now getting late, so we drove up to Fire Lane Road north of Conover hoping for a spruce grouse. Stopping at the usual spot about 3/4 of a mile east of 45, we walked the road toward a spruce thicket when a commotion caught our attention. A spruce grouse blasted out of a nearby tree with a northern goshawk right on its tail. Clearly, the most exciting part of the trip and a great end to a slow day.
Snowmobilers were everywhere, with the racing event going on at Eagle River. Just about every service road had snowmobiles roaring down them at stupid rates of speed. I'm sure that most of the birds anywhere near these roads were well back in the forest. We couldn't stop anywhere without almost being run over or at least hearing approaching snowmobiles.
From there, we decided to drive to Ashland and spend the night, then look for the gyrfalcon in the morning.
At dawn, we watched the ore dock for about an hour, when I decided to drive out on Lake Superior to get a better look at the end of the ore dock. Ice fishermen were everywhere, so I drove out to where they had stopped to fish and glassed the vast ice sheet beyond them. Suddenly, I saw a rapid movement and there was the gyrfalcon, dive-bombing a snowy owl: the second most exciting part of the trip.
From there, we decided to head up to Bayfield county. Lots of snow, but not many birds. A surprise was a singing cardinal just north of the city of Bayfield. We saw several flocks of pine siskins in this same area as well. There were quite a few gulls at Cornucopia and Port Wing, but precious few other birds, save pine siskins. We then went south to Iron River on A and continued south from there through the National Forest, hoping for some more birds. After four hours of driving, stopping, walking, we saw very little: one shrike, several siskins, a large flock of redpolls.
My son ended up with 4 life birds. What surprised me, was how we whiffed on gray jay, boreal chickadee, Bohemian waxwing, evening and pine grosbeaks and crossbills. I know these areas quite well and hit six almost sure spots for boreal chickadees and saw none. At the same time, we saw at least 50 red-breasted nuthatches!
I know that I will NEVER do a birding trip in the Eagle River area again the second weekend in January. I had never heard the northwoods so noisy and seen so many people. Many of the forest service roads were glare ice from being backed down by snowmobiles, making driving interesting at times. The Clam Lake area was much quieter, but we didn't get there until later in the day. In retrospect, we should have gone there right after seeing the gyr instead of up in Bayfield County. Although we did see a half-dozen bald eagles on hwy. 13 along the lakeshore drive between Ashland and Bayfield."
-Daryl Christensen
Thanks to Daryl and Donald for the post. I have just started to learn about birding, and this post makes me want to learn more. The post is also a warning. If the northwoods wants to increase tourism, motorized sports will have to become quieter.