While staring at corn stubble for hours between Yarmouth and Morning Sun, IA (Des Moines Co. and Louisa Co. respectively),
Scores of Snow Geese passed overhead in waves early in the morning. Skeins numbering in the thousands, along with smaller flocks of several hundred blurred together into a continuous stream surging northwest. Lesser amounts of Canadian Geese, and mixed flocks of ducks (of which only Northern Pintails I identified) flew among the throng. A swarm of blackbirds blackened the sky like smoke, bending in flight as a malleable mass. A Western Meadowlark called. A FOY song to my ears. >From a great distance, I watched a pair of Turkey Vultures lift from the nude canopy of a shelterbelt, rocking with the stout wind, in tipsy spirals upward. A pair of hunting Harriors were working crop residue, pasture and grassland south of Hwy. 78. Cruising around Cone Marsh later in the day, I viewed a smattering of Greater White-fronted Geese and gobs of Mallards. Good Birding, Randall Scheiner Ely, IA --- This mailing list is sponsored by the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. Membership available on-line at http://www.iowabirds.org/iou/PayDues.aspx. ----- You are currently subscribed to ia-bird as: [email protected]. Unsubscribe at http://iowabirds.org/Reporting/Listserv.aspx.
