the most interesting bird of the week was a "gray ghost", a male Northern Harrier. What was interesting was not that I saw one (it was the second one this week), but where I saw it. I observed it soaring above the Town Center shopping center in Eagan. I had assumed it was one of the local Red-tailed Hawks from the nearby interstate, but when it passed, I had to grab my binocs to check it out. After it crossed the parking lots, it descended to hunting levels over a nearby wetland.
We have at least two Red-breasted Nuthatches visiting our feeders in Eagan. On Monday I checked out the Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove, which were notable for their lack of interesting birds. Besides the flocks of mostly Ring-billed Gulls and the Canada Geese, the only birds of interest were a flock of about thirty Hooded Mergansers on a pond north and east of Weaver Lake Road and Main Street. I got out of town twice this week for work, to Fairmount and to New Ulm. There were few birds around, excepting the non-native trash birds at the homesteads along the route. I did stop briefly at a Swan Lake WMA in Nicollet County and found a Kestrel, a small number of Tree Sparrows, and a large flock of blackbirds that appeared to be mostly, if not all, Red-winged Blackbirds. It was striking how little was around. Steve Weston on Quiggley Lake in Eagan, MN sweston2 at comcast.net
