This morning was busy at the banding station at Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings. We banded over fifty juncoes, and one was a white-winged junco. We also observed purple finches, eastern bluebirds, and red-breasted nuthatches.
After banding, I stopped over at Prescott and observed the peregrines on the railroad bridge and about six tree swallows flying overhead. I stopped at Point Douglas and observed ring-necked ducks, redheads, bufflehead, hooded mergansers and scaup. I ran into fellow birder Jim Otto and he helped me try and distinguish greater from lesser scaup. They were fairly close to shore and I was able to pick out at least two greaters. If scaup are not a strong suit for you, it could be a good spot to try and tell the difference--with a scope, they are relatively close to shore. I did not see the harlequin duck today. Sharon Stiteler www.birdchick.com Minneapolis, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080404/252a7813/attachment.html
