[mou] Stilts still present-Belle Plaine

[Benjamin Fritchman]

I woke up pretty early(1:30 A.M.) to get to the Belle Plaine Sewage Ponds 
before workers started arriving this morning, just my luck the first truck 
arrived at 5:30, well before I found the stilts. They didn't seem to mind me 
as long as I was out of their hair, and I don't think they saw me because of 
the dense fog. It took me 2 hours of searching the ponds before I found the 
BN Stilts. The fog I think actually got thicker between 4:30 and 7:00 when I 
finally found the birds. It was a pretty tedious search, you could only see 
the shore that was directly below you, making it easy to scare shorebirds 
ahead of you without actually seeing them, this I'm guessing is why it took 
me so long to find the birds, I'm sure I flushed them several times, anyway 
they finally came to me, landing right in front of me, there were 2 of them, 
I didn't locate the third individual.

Also during my scrutiny of the ponds I located something that I wasn't 
expecting-a Least Bittern. It was calling from the corner of the first pond 
in the SE corner where there is a lot of vegetation, he kept me company for 
at least an hour while I tried to wait for the fog to lift, pretty neat. 
Also had one later in the day at Old Cedar Ave. Bridge.

Ben Fritchman
Long Prairie, MN

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