[mou] Lake Rebecca Park yesterday

[Richard Wood]

Hi all,

Yesterday Ginkgo and I went to Lake Rebecca Park and the surrounding area for a little dog walking and birding.  We had a very good time and Ginkgo got to interact with a few new dogs (all larger than her, of course).  Here's what we saw in the three hours or so that we were out (4:15 PM to 7:00 PM ish):

Northern Cardinal|Dakota|20080419||||
Mallard|Dakota|20080419||||
Great Blue Heron|Dakota|20080419||||
Red-winged Blackbird|Dakota|20080419||||
American Goldfinch|Dakota|20080419||||
Eastern Phoebe|Dakota|20080419||||
Bufflehead|Dakota|20080419||||
Tree Swallow|Dakota|20080419||||
Red-breasted Merganser|Dakota|20080419||||
American White Pelican|Dakota|20080419|100|||
Belted Kingfisher|Dakota|20080419||||
American Robin|Dakota|20080419||||
Double-crested Cormorant|Dakota|20080419||||
Bald Eagle|Dakota|20080419||||
Ring-billed Gull|Dakota|20080419||||
Chipping Sparrow|Dakota|20080419||||
Dark-eyed Junco|Dakota|20080419||||
American Crow|Dakota|20080419||||
Canada Goose|Dakota|20080419||||
Black-capped Chickadee|Dakota|20080419||||
Song Sparrow|Dakota|20080419||||
White-breasted Nuthatch|Dakota|20080419||||
Downy Woodpecker|Dakota|20080419||||
American Coot|Dakota|20080419||||
Red-bellied Woodpecker|Dakota|20080419||||
Ruby-crowned Kinglet|Dakota|20080419||||
Sandhill Crane|Dakota|20080419||||
Brown-headed Cowbird|Dakota|20080419||||
Yellow-rumped Warbler|Dakota|20080419||||
Barn Swallow|Dakota|20080419||||
Northern Flicker|Dakota|20080419||||
Killdeer|Dakota|20080419||||
Pied-billed Grebe|Dakota|20080419||||
Blue-winged Teal|Dakota|20080419||||
Great Egret|Dakota|20080419||||
Forster's Tern|Dakota|20080419||||
Common Grackle|Dakota|20080419||||

 The 100 or so AW Pelicans were on the far side of the river as we looked to the East.  I counted about 14 heads and the rest were a blob of white, similar to Jill and my first sightings of American Avocets at Aransas NWR in Texas.  They seem to be one big white bird.  But I'd estimate that there were about 100 birds there.  

Before yesterday, I'd seen one or two Flickers this year.  Yesterday, I saw three Flickers in one spot!  After crossing the levee, we saw a pair of Blue-winged Teal, almost in the same spot I saw them last year, and had two flyover flocks of Forster's Terns.  Earlier, I had seen two Sandhill Cranes fly over my head.  At first, I thought they might be Whooping Cranes, but then I thought, if they are, they sure are lost.  Song Sparrows were everywhere, as were the Tree Swallows.  I did see a single Barn Swallow, as well as a nice Myrtle Yellow-rumped Warbler.  As an aside, it's funny that the Myrtle form is an Eastern variety, yet when we lived in Maryland all it seemed that we, or anyone else for that matter, saw were Audubon's.  Go figure.  The birds don't read the books, yet reporters get yelled at for reporting the "wrong species".  To all you of out there that have nothing better to do than follow my bird posts around the country, I say this: "Go
 figure, indeed" (and there are people that do this).

I'm currently up to 81 species for the year, despite not having gone much further than to the  180th Street marsh.

Good birding,
Richard

Richard L. Wood, Ph. D.
Hastings, MN
rwoodphd at yahoo.com



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