I know a few people might be interested in the status of the Whooping Crane in Mahnomen County. I drove around the area for a couple of hours and had no luck refinding the bird. There is a lot of area to search, so it may have just eluded me, but they are pretty hard to overlook, thus I believe it has moved on. I believe this may very well be a wild bird from the Alberta flock for two reasons, one the location is pretty far west for any wandering Wisconsin bird, and also, for those who don't know the geography of Mahnomen Co. very well, the western portion is primarily flat and open, while the eastern portion is hilly and wooded. The change is fairly abrupt, and it forms a natural migration route for birds heading south. Any birds coming from the west tend to concentrate along here and head south. A few weeks ago, Bob Dunlap and I had a good push of raptors, geese, swans, cranes, etc. in this area. And today was also the same, with a lot of migrating birds following the edge south. Anyway, the area the crane was reported from is along this area where the plains meet the hills, indicating to me a bird coming from a westerly/northwestly direction. Hopefully sufficient documentation is sent in.
Also of interest is that I found 2 more Gray Jays in Norman County. They were along Hwy. 200, just east of where CR 41 meets the highway. They were at a homestead with fire number 3911. They were on both sides of the highway, and spent most of the time in the spruce trees on the south side and in the crabapple tree on the south side. It'd be interesting to see the extent of this Gray Jay irruption if there was more coverage here in the northwest. That being said, please send any sightings in western/northwestern Minnesota to either Jeanie Joppru or myself for compilation purposes-even if you relocate a bird that has already been reported. Thanks. Ben Fritchman Fargo, ND NDSU _________________________________________________________________ Try the next generation of search with Windows Live Search today! http://imagine-windowslive.com/minisites/searchlaunch/?locale=en-us&source=hmtagline
