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[Alt, Mark]

I spent Sunday, 12/5, observing and filming the biggest bird spectacle
in MN, and I went south from the Twin Cities! =20

I went to Lake Pepin and down to Weaver Bottoms to see the waterfowl
that stage up this time of year.  I passed Lake Pepin and saw so few
waterfowl in my frequent stops that I counted Eagles (38, of which only
12 were dark juvenile).  The wind chopped the lake into whitecaps, and
the birds were not visible with binos from where I stopped. I got to the
Weaver Bottoms and there were by my estimate, 3,000 Tundra Swans. The
best vantage point I had was from the cemetery to the west.  The Mature
White Cedar there held a large flock (20+) of feeding Pine Siskins. =20

On the way back the ducks were closer to the western shore and I saw
first large rafts of Canvasbacks and Common Goldeneyes. The Can's
engaged in a skirmish line feeding behavior, I am not certain what I
saw, but here is how I interpreted it.  A narrow strip of water was
brownish, contrasting to the grayish blue of the surrounding waters.
Canvasbacks that were swimming in this water, which I estimated to be
about 70 feet long and about 10 feet wide, numbered to about 1000 birds.
I was focused more eon behaviors than numbers this day. There were some
Lesser Scaup, Goldeneyes and Ring-necks mixed in, but the flock seemed
to be 80 % Can's. The ducks dived frenetically; it appeared there were
about 25% submerged at any one time.  The ducks were diving as quickly
as they could. I am familiar with Gizzard Shad, a silver shiner, so the
brown color to the water had me confused, was it a different fish or
organism they were feeding on? I do not know, but I presume the school
of fish was being fed on from below, hence the schooling together, then
the pack of diving ducks fed until full.  I wasn't sure Canvasbacks eat
fish, I must check this out. My guess is this was what was happening.

Further north, near mile marker 70, I came into view of Merganser
hordes.  Common Mergansers occupying the water space, evenly spaced, I
guessed every 15 feet as if on a grid, there was a bird. I do not know
how many Common Mergansers there were, but I filmed them as they lifted
off and flew, sea-duck-like, 3 feet over the waves, to the east and
eventually out of view on the Wisconsin side.  I filmed it and I
estimated my field of view filmed 4,000 birds a minute fly by, and my
filed of view was about 10% of what I could see of the flock, so a
conservative and amateurish guess is more than 40,000+.  Because of the
waves and the wind and me having out my camcorder rather than my scope,
there could have been many more than that, but there were certainly at
least that many there. Again, my video is very poor quality; I zoomed in
too much which "zebra's" the screen when there is so much texture and
movement.  The colors separated a bit, and it is all very fuzzy, but it
is clearly a huge flock of waterfowl.  I was lucky to have captured it,
even if blurry; it is a cool thing to see.

I found a red-phased Eastern Screech Owl road-killed North of Redwing,
just south of the shortcut to Welch.  There are some deer stands visible
on the hills to the West. It was badly crushed by a car, so I did not
pick it up.



Mark Alt
Brooklyn Center, MN
Hennepin County.