[mou] Birding around

[Steve Weston]

the most interesting bird of the week was a "gray ghost", a male Northern 
Harrier.  What was interesting was not that I saw one (it was the second one 
this week), but where I saw it.  I observed it soaring above the Town Center 
shopping center in Eagan.   I had assumed it was one of the local Red-tailed 
Hawks from the nearby interstate, but when it passed, I had to grab my 
binocs to check it out.  After it crossed the parking lots, it descended to 
hunting levels over a nearby wetland.

We have at least two Red-breasted Nuthatches visiting our feeders in Eagan.

On Monday I checked out the Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove, which were notable 
for their lack of interesting birds.  Besides the flocks of mostly 
Ring-billed Gulls and the Canada Geese, the only birds of interest were a 
flock of about thirty Hooded Mergansers on a pond north and east of Weaver 
Lake Road and Main Street.

I got out of town twice this week for work, to Fairmount and to New Ulm. 
There were few birds around, excepting the non-native trash birds at the 
homesteads along the route.  I did stop briefly at a Swan Lake WMA in 
Nicollet County and found a Kestrel, a small number of Tree Sparrows, and a 
large flock of blackbirds that appeared to be mostly, if not all, Red-winged 
Blackbirds.   It was striking how little was around.

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