[mou] Scissor Tailed Flycatcher! (long)

[SCmzd at aol.com]

In what will go down as my most amazing day of birding to date......I was  
not planning on birding today.  There are many things around my house that  need 
attending to.  Still I thought that a little jaunt over to the Morgan  Park 
mudflats would be alright.  Just one hour I told myself.  There  were several 
veerys, a blackpoll warbler, and some american redstarts near the  Morgan Park 
mudflats, but no shorebirds.  Fine I thought, now I can go back  home and get 
some things done.  However, on the way to the car I heard two  black bellied 
plovers fly over calling and immediately started back towards the  flats to see 
if they landed.  Well, they had not, but TWENTY TWO ruddy  turnstones had.  
They fed with a feverish pitch, flipping rocks, eating  flies, drinking water, 
and then they became quite still for a few seconds.   Moments later, they took 
off, ascending to the skies and they were gone.  I  also saw a small flock of 
Lapland Longspurs in breeding plumage that seemed to  show up and depart with 
the turnstones.  Well, I can tell you that this was  the biggest flock of 
turnstones I had ever seen, and it stirred something in  me.  I had to go to 
Minnesota Point now!  The house can wait,  migration will not.  I arrived at the 
point, parked near the airport and  started towards the shore on the lake side. 
 Bam! right away there was a  red headed woodpecker on a fencepost some 20ft 
in front of me.  The  woodpecker flew off, but the sight of it lifted my 
spirit even higher.  I  reached the shore and discovered five black-bellied plovers 
in full on breeding  plumage-!-Nice!  The house was now the last thing on my 
mind.  I began  the "death march" towards the breakwall.  I was coming up near 
the rocks  where the break wall begins on the Minnesota side when there to my 
right a flash  of color came off a low perch.  I had been looking for shore 
birds and was  suprised by this flushing bird.  Something in my mind did not 
register with  this bird.  I looked through my camera and saw that it was a 
scissor-tailed  flycatcher!  For the next several hours I watched this bird do 
it's  thing.  What a show!  There was plenty of insect life to keep this  bird 
busy.  It was also interesting to watch this bird interact with  an eastern 
kingbird that was present.  On the way out I finished off this  amazing day by 
running into some dunlins, sanderlings, more turnstones, and the  black bellied 
plovers.  And finally, while leaving the point, I saw the  redheaded woodpecker 
again, what a day.  The first thing I did after  arriving home was to call 
one of the local birding
"legends" to get the word out about the scissor-tailed  flycatcher.



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