Wow!! Here I am 54 years old, birding since my 1976 summer Oklahoma University Biological Station ornithology class on the Texas/Oklahoma border and bubbling with 17 years of new birding in Minnesota - and I still get excited and see lifer birds when I put just a little effort out and try new things!
Since I have put my water feature out and jazzed it up with a rock edging and various bathing areas, added a meal worm feeder, toss out seed around the edges all beneath a crab apple tree and bird from my kitchen window - I have added the following species since about two or three weeks ago in my yard: Nashville Warbler (several hanging out) Orange-crowned Warbler (lifer) Tennessee Warbler (several hanging out) Common Yellowthroat Yellow-bellied Sap Sucker White-crowned Sparrow (several hanging out) Lincoln's Sparrow (lifer - several hanging out) Indigo Bunting Yellow-rumped Warbler Magnolia Warbler Palm Warbler Western Tanager (lifer) Song Sparrow Rusty Blackbird Golden-winged Warbler (lifer) Ovenbird Black and White Warbler Ruby-throated Hummingbird Plus my regulars noted in past emails. Then, yesterday, I efforted to leave my kitchen window and cup of green tea to go adventuring out to see some of the other unique warblers reported on the net. So I went out for a two and a half hour drive and walk to Wood Lake and Murphy-Hanrehan - mostly for the exercise and to pry my way away from my home (despite rumors - I am not a hermit). So over the course of that brief window of time - driving all the way from just south of Blaine along University Avenue - here what I added got to see and to add to my life list: Black-throated Blue Warbler (lifer) Blue Winged Warbler (lifer) Clay-colored Sparrow (lifer) Missed the Cerulean (aw shucks! still a lifer opportunity) Hooded Warbler (probably same one from last year) Magnolia Warbler Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Yellow Warbler Eastern Bluebird and a host of the usual suspects I remember my first summer in Minnesota in 1989, I had taken a job that had me measuring depth-to-water in some monitoring wells on Grand Forks AFB. It was a hot, hot May (not compared to Oklahoma but that was what I was told for here) and it had just rained the night before. As I stood alone in a remote part of the base, a Long-billed Dowitcher landed a few dozen yards from me and was probing the sand puddles for food. I froze at this incredibly unique bird for a guy from the southern plains. I dared not move as the bird actually began working its way toward me. I wasn't even breathing as it got closer and closer - sewing machining its way through the puddles - until beyond all belief it actually worked its way right between my legs in the puddle I was standing in. I almost needed to change my clothes from disbelief! It was from that moment on that I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy and it has been a wild birding ride ever since. Thank you Minnesota, MN birders and the birds who bless my eyes! By the way - If anyone wants to know the where abouts of Scissor- tailed Flycatchers or Painted Buntings or the like in Oklahoma - just ask. Most are just a few miles off I-35 south of OKC on to the Texas border. I always detour on my sojourns home to see them in the summers. Thomas Maiello Spring Lake Park
