[mou] Grand Marais Birding Fest. & pre-fest.

[Steve and Sherry Watson]

	Hello all,

	Bob Janssen's pre-festival class and the Grand Marais Birding
Festival were much quieter than usual.  The two day festival classes on
the 27th and 28th didn't hold much excitement but did contain a few
scoters including white-winged and surf at Paradise Beach.  On Friday
the first day of the festival it was quite foggy and wasn't the greatest
for viewing the lake as we could barely see the rocks at Paradise but
had a couple white-winged scoters and two blue geese near the Casino.
Friday night I did a bit of birding up the Gunflint trail with Didrick
Benz and John Hockema and we found a nice great grey owl sitting on a
telephone pole along the Lima Mountain Grade.  Saturday...well we'll
just say it was worse than Friday and we couldn't see the rocks at
Paradise beach at ALL!  Sunday, today...Awwwwww, much better the fog
finally cleared up and we could actually top of thirty species.  We had
black and white-winged scoters, long-tailed duck, red-necked grebe, and
greater scaup at Paradise beach but not a whole lot elsewhere.  Well
that is about all for around here, I'm not sure about the other groups
on the Festival that I wasn't on but I do know of a pair of cape may
warblers at the Sea Villas, a catbird in the campground and a
blue-headed vireo somewhere on the west side of the harbor.  Good
Birding to all,

Josh Watson
Grand Marais      

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.776 / Virus Database: 523 - Release Date: 10/12/04