My Minn Birding Weekends group covered parts of Nobles and Jackson counties on 29-30 March and found what was probably one of the largest concentrations of geese ever recorded in the state. The numbers, at least, were certainly larger than anything I had ever seen in Minnesota. Although we were unable to attempt an overall count, I would conservatively say we saw a minimum of 50,000 geese. Of these, I would estimate that Snows, Greater White-fronteds, and Cackling Geese were present in roughly equal numbers, with each species comprising about 30% of the total: i.e., at least 15,000 individuals of each. Canada and Ross's geese combined probably comprised the remaining 10%. I was able to identify at least 30 or 40 individual Ross's, but this was certainly only a small percentage of the number of Ross's which were actually present.
I was most impressed by the numbers of Greater White-fronted Geese, and I have to think a record number of these would have been recorded had we been able to count them all. Two of the flocks I tried to count each had a minimum of 1,500 white-fronteds, and there were several other flocks with just as many or more individuals of this species. The area covered was in southeastern Nobles Co (mostly on 29 March) and southwestern Jackson Co (on 30 March), bounded on the north by I-90, on the west by U S Hwy 59, and on the east by MN Hwy 86. The lakes were still almost entirely frozen, except for some relatively small areas of open water on a few of the lakes; Lake Okabena in Worthington had the most open water that we saw, but it was still >90% frozen. There were only a few small areas of open water found in fields resulting from snowmelt, and the ground was almost entirely free of snow cover. Other migrants of interest from this past weekend included: - 19 species of ducks: i.e., all the regular species occurring in SW Minn, including Greater Scaup on L Okabena - Greater Yellowlegs at L Okabena - 4 Franklin's Gulls on L Okabena - Red-bellied Woodpecker at Hawkeye Co Park on Indian Lake (thanks to a tip from Brian Smith), plus another in the town of Jackson - E Phoebe in Worthington - Northern Shrike near L Ocheda, plus an unidentified fly-by shrike at Indian L - Red-breasted Nuthatches in Worthington and Lake Bella Co Park - Lincoln's and Swamp sparrows at Lake Bella Co Park - small flock of fly-by Lapland Longspurs near Round Lake - good numbers of Rusty Blackbirds at several locations - 2 Great-tailed Grackles in Jackson Co: along Hwy 86, 3 mi N of Iowa border Kim Eckert
