Thanks to James Mattson for the alert on the loons at Black Dog. My wife and I went there this evening from about 6:00 pm to 7:300 pm and came up with a total of 57 loons in 4 separate groups. We saw 4 loons right at the observation deck maybe 20 to 30 feet away. Another group of 16 were seen from a path going west from the observation deck that took us past the little point that obscures the view from the deck. A group of 12 was seen towards the east from the path from the parking lot to the observation deck. The last group of 25 was seen from the east outflow of the lake. We chose to walk down the path from the road that is on the east side of the outflow so we didn't get to see much of the east lake. Given the numbers that we did see, I would bet that there were many more further to the west on the east lake. Other birds seen: West outflow: 12 - Ruddy Ducks 1 - Red Breasted Merganser Many Tree Swallows 4 - Double Crested Cormorants 1 - Canada Goose Observation Deck: 5 - Red Breasted Mergansers 2 - Mallards East Outflow 2 - Northern Shovelers 19 Buffle Head 3 - Blue Winged Teal 4 - Ruddy Ducks 2 - Mallards 20 - Common Mergansers 4 - Redheads 1 - Great Egret Several Lesser Scaup On Nichols Road just before the junction with Silver Bell Rd. 7 - Wild Turkeys crossing the road in someone's yard where there were 4 deer. There were also numerous Ring-Billed Gulls at every stop we made at Black Dog. Byron Blood -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080411/d43edca8/attachment.html
