[mou] Misc shorebirds

[Dennis/Barbara Martin]

Just returned from the second of two two day trips to the west to look for
shorebirds.  Finding mud flats is not easy this year.  Most WMA lakes are
full to the cattails.  Most sewage ponds are also full to the rocks.  The
only decent spots we found are as follows.  A few birds were seen in other
places but not many.

Lac Qui Parle County-Salt Lake has good mud flats and a good variety of
shorebirds plus nesting Eared Grebes, on Thursday there were 7 Marbled
Godwits and one Willet among the rest on the Minnesota side, the South
Dakota side also had a very large number of birds, the only other spot of
any consequence in this county we were at is the spot mentioned for the
Yellow Crowned Night Herons (which we never saw in spite of 4 stops on
different days and times)

Yellow Medicine County- Lanners WMA (2 miles north and 2 miles east of St
Leo) is still good, it was drawn down last year and was good this spring and
still has good mud flats, 13 species were present today, although that was
made temporarily lower with fewer total birds by the hunting of a Peregrine
Falcon, easiest to study with a scope from the north road where you are able
to walk a few feet through the reeds to get good open views


Dennis and Barbara Martin
dbmartin@skypoint.com