[mou] Birding about the Metro & more

[Steve Weston]

I am still finding Barn Swallows feeding young in nests.  On Monday I found in an Eagan picnic shelter what was unquestionably a second brood for a pair that nested by themselves about five weeks earlier about 20 yeards away.  On Thursday I found two more nests at a small colony at a loading dock by Anderson Lakes in Eden Prairie.

A more interesting bird was the juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk I found in Brooklyn Park along US-81 near Brooklyn Blvd on Tuesday.  The same day at Rosedale, I observed a Peregrine flying through the parking lot about 10 feet above the cars.  It flew right over my head about thirty or fourty feet up.  

Today I took the opportunity to detour to check out the Princeton sewerage ponds.  The ponds were relatively uninteresting with no shorebird habitat and little waterfowl. I found a few uninteresting gulls, a couple of Franklin Gulls, and six Black Terns.  All around the ponds Cedar Waxwings were hawking.  In the bushes surrounding the ponds, which appeared to be much more promising habitat, I did find a couple of blackburnian warblers.

I have looked at several ponds and marshes around and with the recent rain have found scant exposed habitat for shorebirds, which means that I should be paying more attention to wet fields.  My backyard is quite birdy, but I have seen nothing new.  I have to remember to fill the hummingbird feeder which is being rapidly drained.

Last weekend, the storm woke me and I decided to check stuff I had on the porch for one of my projects.  Much had been blown around, but nothing had to be pulled into the house.  I did have to pick up a plant that had been blown over.  After I climbed back into to bed, Cherie cried, "What in the world is that on the wall?"  I had to get back up and carry a wet tree frog from the bedroom and deposit it outside.  I probably would have let it crawl the walls all night, but the grand-puppies had sought comfort from the storm on our bed.  I didn't trust them to not turn it into a meal.  Of course, Cherie probably wouldn't have tolerated an amphibian in the bedroom, no matter how insignificant.

Steve Weston on Quiggley Lake in Eagan, MN
sweston2 at comcast.net  
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