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Birded the northern half of Lake Pepin above and below Lake City yester= day. Two groups of 200+ Common Mergansers north of Lake City on Wisconsin si= de and one huge group at milepost 71 (171?) on U.S. 61 about 3 miles below= Wild Wings wildlife art store on Minnesota side. No easy pullover and shoulder just wide enough for a car's width so use extreme caution here= or park farther south at pullovers and use a scope. Estimate was rushed b= ut I'd guesstimate 20,000+/-- 5,000 with tens of hundreds of gulls soaring= above and the activity frenetic. Small flocks of Canada Geese, Mallard= , and C. Goldeneyes on northern part of lake which was wide open (backwat= ers frozen). The mergansers gather here each fall feeding on gizzard shad before the lake freezes and estimates in past years have ranged from 40= ,000 to 100,000 mergansers. Bob Russell, USFWS= --0__=09BBE5CEDFFC55B78f9e8a93df938690918c09BBE5CEDFFC55B7 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Content-type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: inline <html><body> <p>Birded the northern half of Lake Pepin above and below Lake City yes= terday. Two groups of 200+ Common Mergansers north of Lake City on Wis= consin side and one huge group at milepost 71 (171?) on U.S. 61 about 3= miles below Wild Wings wildlife art store on Minnesota side. No easy = pullover and shoulder just wide enough for a car's width so use extreme= caution here or park farther south at pullovers and use a scope. Esti= mate was rushed but I'd guesstimate 20,000+/-- 5,000 with tens of hundr= eds of gulls soaring above and the activity frenetic. Small flocks of = Canada Geese, Mallard, and C. Goldeneyes on northern part of lake which= was wide open (backwaters frozen). The mergansers gather here each fa= ll feeding on gizzard shad before the lake freezes and estimates in pas= t years have ranged from 40,000 to 100,000 mergansers. Bob Russell, US= FWS</body></html>= --0__=09BBE5CEDFFC55B78f9e8a93df938690918c09BBE5CEDFFC55B7--
