Hello! Yesterday I saw a pair of Marbled Godwits in a wet hay field ~3.5 miles west of the town of Rothsay on Co. Rd. 26, on the north side of the road.
Today, at Blanket Flower SNA, in SE Clay County I was stumped by a small warbler-sized bird. The head looked very much like a Golden-winged Warbler, but it did not have a yellow bar on it's wing. Instead there were two whitish bars on the wing. The closest to what I saw is pictured on page 355 of the National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Second Edition, the middle picture of Lawrence's Warbler (hybrid between a Golden-winged Warbler and a Blue-winged Warbler). I had a bit of time to look things up and look back at the bird before it took off. It made a high-pitched sound similar to a Golden-crowned Kinglet, or a Golden-winged Warbler (but not like a Blue-winged warbler). Before it took off it was foraging near the ground and on the ground in a small Aspen clone (clump) on a very hilly prairie area. I am still unsure what I saw but I thought it would be fun to share it. Other species of birds at Blanket Flower SNA today were (in order of appearance): Killdeer Am. Robin Am. Crows Mourning Dove Wild Turkey - 5 toms and 4-6 hens Mallards Greater Prairie Chickens - booming all over Ring-billed gulls (flying over) Chickadees Downy Woodpecker Song Sparrows Red-winged blackbirds (flying over) Canada Geese (flying over) Blue Jay Tree Swallow Northern Flicker Piliated Woodpecker Horned Lark Common Loon (flying over) Great Blue Herons (flying over) Wilson's Snipe Tundra Swans (flying over) Vesper Sparrow Double-Crested Cormorants (flying over) Willow Flycatcher Hairy Woodpecker THE MYSTERY BIRD MENTIONED ABOVE Northern Harrier Turkey Vulture And a bunch of Western Chorus Frogs singing up a storm! Happy Birding! (and frogging) Melissa Melissa Driscoll DNR Natural Resource Specialist - SNA Bird Survey Coordinator 1509 1st Avenue North Fergus Falls, MN 56537 218-739-7576 218-739-7601 fax email: [email protected]
