[mou] Browerville Fallout

[Benjamin Fritchman]

Yesterday I got out of track practice early, so I headed to the Browerville 
Sewage Ponds. A storm had gone through very early that morning. I got there 
and the warblers made me stop half way up the road to the ponds. The 
warblers were thick, covering the gravel road in front of me. There was a 
group of 20 Yellow Warblers in with the Yellow-rumps on the road.
Then I noticed the Kingbirds, they lined the wires, covered the rocks and 
sat on the side of the road, and all over the building, it was just constant 
movement as thousands of swallows filled the air with the warblers, then the 
Tanagers showed up, lining the pine tree branches. I finally made my way up 
to the ponds where I was totally surprised. If anyone knows anything about 
these ponds, they aren't too great for shorebirds, maybe a spotted or 2 and 
a few Yellowlegs, you can also basically see only one pond.
But when I got to the edge and looked down I witnessed a mass of black. The 
shorebirds were thick! They lined the near shore, 5 deep from the shore all 
the way down the shore. I counted close to 700 indidviduals, all on this one 
side of the pond.
There were 13 species, involving
11 Long-billed Dowitchers
73 Wilson's Phalaropes
3 White-rumped Sandpipers
55 Pectoral Sandpipers
12 Dunlins
and numerous others.

Anyway it was a lot of fun

Ben Fritchman

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