In what will go down as my most amazing day of birding to date......I was not planning on birding today. There are many things around my house that need attending to. Still I thought that a little jaunt over to the Morgan Park mudflats would be alright. Just one hour I told myself. There were several veerys, a blackpoll warbler, and some american redstarts near the Morgan Park mudflats, but no shorebirds. Fine I thought, now I can go back home and get some things done. However, on the way to the car I heard two black bellied plovers fly over calling and immediately started back towards the flats to see if they landed. Well, they had not, but TWENTY TWO ruddy turnstones had. They fed with a feverish pitch, flipping rocks, eating flies, drinking water, and then they became quite still for a few seconds. Moments later, they took off, ascending to the skies and they were gone. I also saw a small flock of Lapland Longspurs in breeding plumage that seemed to show up and depart with the turnstones. Well, I can tell you that this was the biggest flock of turnstones I had ever seen, and it stirred something in me. I had to go to Minnesota Point now! The house can wait, migration will not. I arrived at the point, parked near the airport and started towards the shore on the lake side. Bam! right away there was a red headed woodpecker on a fencepost some 20ft in front of me. The woodpecker flew off, but the sight of it lifted my spirit even higher. I reached the shore and discovered five black-bellied plovers in full on breeding plumage-!-Nice! The house was now the last thing on my mind. I began the "death march" towards the breakwall. I was coming up near the rocks where the break wall begins on the Minnesota side when there to my right a flash of color came off a low perch. I had been looking for shore birds and was suprised by this flushing bird. Something in my mind did not register with this bird. I looked through my camera and saw that it was a scissor-tailed flycatcher! For the next several hours I watched this bird do it's thing. What a show! There was plenty of insect life to keep this bird busy. It was also interesting to watch this bird interact with an eastern kingbird that was present. On the way out I finished off this amazing day by running into some dunlins, sanderlings, more turnstones, and the black bellied plovers. And finally, while leaving the point, I saw the redheaded woodpecker again, what a day. The first thing I did after arriving home was to call one of the local birding "legends" to get the word out about the scissor-tailed flycatcher.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20070523/303a6bb9/attachment.html
