We are only six weeks away from the 9th Annual Great MN River Birding Day. As in past years, birders will get out on both Friday and Saturday, September 12th and 13th west of Hwy 15 which runs from St. Cloud south through Hutchinson, New Ulm, Madelia and Fairmont to the Iowa border. Birders will get out on Saturday east of Hwy 15. There will be rallies in Bloomington, Henderson and Olivia on Saturday afternoon. The Bloomington rally will start at 1PM and be hosted by Anne Hanley and George Skinner at the Minnesota Valley NWR Headquarters in Bloomington, just east of 34th Ave. So. and south of I-494. The Henderson rally will start at 3PM and be hosted by Dolores Hagen and Art and Barb Straub at Henderson Feathers located at 526 Main St.(NE corner of 6th and Main in downtown Henderson) in the lower level. It will feature a presentation by Mary Beth Garrigan from the National Eagle Center and Marie Thrun of the Raptor Center live presentation of Raptors of the Minnesota River Valley. The Olivia rally will start at 4:30PM and be hosted by Steve and Chris Hettig at Master's Coffee Shop, 809 E. Lincoln Ave.(same as US 212 in downtown Olivia). There will be refreshments at all 3 rallies. Last year we identified 191 species falling 13 short of the record 204 identified in 2006. We need your help in the field to challenge that record. If you would like to participate please contact me at 612-728-2232 or at bxwilliams at cbburnet.com. You can bird as much or as little as you like and there is no fee for participating. You can go out on your own, form your own team or ask to be placed on an existing team. The area covered during this event stretches from Faribault County in the SE to Otter Tail County in the NW and from the Ft. Snelling State Park in the east to Big Stone Lake State Park in the west. You can visit the website at www.birdingtrail.org <http://www.birdingtrail.org/> for information about many of the birding sites. This event is sponsored by Audubon MN and the Minnesota River Valley Audubon Chapter. Bob Williams, Bloomington -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080801/387b5212/attachment.html