I woke up pretty early(1:30 A.M.) to get to the Belle Plaine Sewage Ponds before workers started arriving this morning, just my luck the first truck arrived at 5:30, well before I found the stilts. They didn't seem to mind me as long as I was out of their hair, and I don't think they saw me because of the dense fog. It took me 2 hours of searching the ponds before I found the BN Stilts. The fog I think actually got thicker between 4:30 and 7:00 when I finally found the birds. It was a pretty tedious search, you could only see the shore that was directly below you, making it easy to scare shorebirds ahead of you without actually seeing them, this I'm guessing is why it took me so long to find the birds, I'm sure I flushed them several times, anyway they finally came to me, landing right in front of me, there were 2 of them, I didn't locate the third individual.
Also during my scrutiny of the ponds I located something that I wasn't expecting-a Least Bittern. It was calling from the corner of the first pond in the SE corner where there is a lot of vegetation, he kept me company for at least an hour while I tried to wait for the fog to lift, pretty neat. Also had one later in the day at Old Cedar Ave. Bridge. Ben Fritchman Long Prairie, MN _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
