[mou] What a Morning!

[Holly Peirson]

I had to take my son to school in Forest Lake this AM. On the way home I saw
a few little bitties flying across the road at an opportune spot for me to
stop, and I had taken my noc’s with me just in case
 The osprey’s field on
Lake Drive/Hwy 23 (just plowed) was ALIVE with birds! Then I moved down the
road about ¼ mile and pulled off, stopped the car, and was blown away
.
There is a yard that belongs to the farm but it’s not a farmyard, it’s just
a large open space with a very small vernal pond, some grasses and small
shrubs, and some huge oaks. I opened the windows and watched and listened.
The ground was crawling with birds, perhaps more than I ever saw at a Point
Pelee fall-out
 

 

I began to calculate
. I counted several times over the next hour and there
were consistently about 12 birds per 16 ft square section of fence. So I did
some math (admittedly not my strong suit) to find the area of the field and
yard I was viewing and came up with 7, 500 birds just on the ground. I
didn’t even try to count all the ones in the trees as they were very busy
feeding, flitting, and fleeing whenever a large truck, bus, or car would go
by. By far the most were Yellow-rumps, second would be Am. Redstart, 3rd
would be Yellow. The rest were ones & twos, but really nice to see them,
however briefly! Best look at a Yellow-throated Vireo I’ve had in a while,
too! I have been reading some of the other posts from the last couple of
days, so I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon,
but it was one of the most unbelievable hours I’ve ever experienced in
birding!

 

I had 13 species of warblers -- and 3 more sp in my own driveway; one was
Northern Waterthrush, and I had about 12 of them from one pond to the next
on my road and all down my drive. I think that probably doubles the number
of waterthrushes I’ve seen in my life!! Hee hee
 

 

Overall, I am at 65 species for the day and that is just what I saw from
that little spot and on the way home, only a couple of miles farther. I
didn’t even try for ducks, geese, terns on Howard Lake, cause there’s really
no way to get to it w/o waders right now
 But I got Sandhill Crane as a pair
was standing ON my road as I drove down it!! So I had to slow down and wait
for them and that’s how I noticed the waterthrushes, a pair of Olive-sided
Flycatchers, and a Chestnut-sided Warbler.

 

Wow
 That makes my spring!

Holly Peirson

Columbus, Anoka Co.

 

Warblers seen: Tennessee (10-12), Nashville (1), No. Parula (1), Yellow
(many), Magnolia (1), Cape May (2), Yellow-rumped (wow), Blackburnian (1),
Palm (small amount), Black & White (1), Ovenbird (heard 2-3, probably
on-territory), and Co. Yellowthroat (few). At home I saw the No. Waterthrush
flock, 1 Chestnut-sided, and I heard a Black-throated Green. At home the
YRWA’s are still eating my jelly, meal worms, peanuts, and suet. The orioles
arrived on Sat, the Catbird and the Ruby-thr Hummer today.

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080514/b1120afa/attachment.html