Monday 3/24 report: Visited western counties birding for a Ross Goose, which I found with Canada's and Cackling. After a five minute scan of open water along the Hwy 40 causeway between LacQParle and Chippewa county, and then giving direction on a Pintail to my daughter, there it was blended in sitting low on the near side fringe ice. A tractor and county truck came by and the whole works lifted into the air, nice to see the dainty goose lift up with the others and gave me great comparison looks! Many species coming in to all locations of causeway crossings from BigStoneNWR on down to LacQParle SP: Lesser Scaups (saw 1 Greater Scaup) Redheads Ringnecks Canvasback Hooded Merganser Ruddy Duck Pintails, Woodducks, and others.... other Geese: many Greater-Whitefronted flocks few Snow Geese flocks many Cackling Geese few DC Cormorants Raptors: 3-Rough-legged Hawks (all dark morph) 3-Northern Harriers 1-Golden Eagle (1st year) Kestrels. Many Western Meadowlarks (heard one...assumed the rest) Many, many Horned Larks...I thought about charting by tallying estimates, let's say it this way: If I averaged a flock of five every half mile (conservatively!), multiply that by the number of roadway miles in that county, I might have a rather good estimate of numbers (sorry, I couldn't find a database of road miles quick enough to multiply it out), regardless, it would be in many ten thousands. And not one of them had a Longspur. Did see a couple of Snow Bunting flocks however. One more featured event, two Rough-legged Hawks in Pope County in the middle of the road gorging on a fresh pheasant kill. When they lifted off, one grabbed took the whole thing with it. Birding time. mjb
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