[mou] Clearwater County Big Day (Itasca St. Park, Upper Rice Lake, Bagley area, Clearbrook Rice paddies)

[Johnson, Douglas]

On May 26, 2008 (Memorial Day) Jeanie Joppru, Shelly Steva, Pat Rice and
I tried to break Matt Cole's and my 1995 mark of 134 for Clearwater
County.  Unfortunately, the temperatures dropped dramatically after 4:30
a.m. when the heavy rains and front went through and the day was mostly
characterized by damp, misty cold and moderate wind until the sun
started clearing the sky near Berner from the northwest part of the
county around 6 p.m.  Warblers were a struggle to see and hear although
we had fair numbers at Itasca St. Park in the a.m. especially near
Nicollet Trail (the best trail in the park in my opinion) off Wilderness
Drive where we had Bay-breasted and Mourning Warbler (very few singing);
even Redstarts and Chestnut-sided Warblers were scarce; there were good
numbers of Thrushes along the park roads including a few Grey-cheeked
and the more common Swainson's Thrushes; and Bert's Cabins still has
good numbers of Evening Grosbeaks.   Unfortunately, many flycatchers
were not calling at all so we were skunked on Olive-sided, Great
Crested, and Alder Flycatchers.  We only heard relatively few Least
Flycatchers even though they were calling seemingly everywhere the warm
day before.  Upper Rice Lake WMA was wind-swept and fogged in so we also
missed out on Western Grebes and other potential waterbirds there.
Hawks were scarce as we had no Kestrel and no accipters (Where are all
the Kestrels! Was there a local die off in April?), however several
widely separated Merlins were seen including a likely Richardsoni race
bird in the open country in the northwest part of the county).  We had a
Dickcissel nevertheless about three or four miles northwest of Bagley
along with our single (!) Eastern Bluebird near by.    42 Wilson's
Phalaropes were at the Clearbrook Sewage Ponds along with a rare Ruddy
Duck for the county.  No Chimney Swifts and Common Nighthawks could be
found.  However, as the day cleared late we did pick up Baird's and
Pectoral Sandpipers and Dunlins at the Skoe (owned by the DFL State
Senator Rod Skoe family and open and friendly to birders)  extensive
wild rice paddies about six miles north of Clearbrook which had good
water (almost too much for shorebirds) and most of the common ducks
including Green-winged Teal and Pintails (but no lingering Scaup or
Tundra Swans as seen in the Waskish area wild rice ponds to the east in
Beltrami County a few days earlier).  Sandhill Cranes started mating
dances at 6 p.m. or so perhaps indicating that there were early nesting
failures.  We found all the six swallow species although in very low
numbers from the April mortality and were particularly fortunate to find
at least a couple Bank Swallows late in the day.  We saw only one(!)
Yellow-headed Blackbird foraging with a large flock of Bobolinks late in
the day in open farm country.   We ended up with 122 species despite
everything.  Because we were not near the record, we skipped the shore
of Lower Red Lake and the forests and marshes on the Red Lake Indian
Reservation in the far north of the county and ended the count fairly
early (be aware of the excellent spicy curly fries from the Clearbrook
Drive-in).   I drove 160 miles during the count period and I used about
six or seven gallons of gas for the count, not counting driving to start
in Clearwater County from Bemidji and back.  Lastly, neither butterflies
nor dragonflies of any kind were seen all day during the count. 

 

Doug Johnson

Bemidji, MN 

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