Hi everyone, I birded Rice and LeSueur Counties today and I found a pair of Trumpeter Swans; one with a neckband, on a marsh immediately west of Sprague Lake. The one with the band was initially sitting on a muskrat house, but after a few minutes went into the water and started swimming toward my car along with the unbanded one. I left at that point so as not to disturb them any further, but not before getting a number from the red neckband: 4M6. Anyone with info on this bird, I'd sure love to hear it! With the one sitting on the muskrat house, I thought maybe there was a chance of nesting (?) but while I was stopped checking out Sprague Lake, the swans flew over, vocalizing, and flew east. I don't believe they kept going though. I think they landed on Sprague Lake's east end. Maybe the will nest here. Hope so!
I saw my first Yellow-rumped Warblers today, both at River Bend Nature Center and Sakatah State Park. Also, I had a FOY Horned Grebe on Sakatah Lake in LeSueur County. I knew it was a good day for Hermit Thrushes today as I saw 8 of them at River Bend on my walk this morning, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw at Sakatah SP! It is no exaggeration when I say that I had no less than 45 Hermit Thrushes at the park today! That is by far a very, very conservative estimate as I was doing my best to carefully count them as I walked. I say this because there were times, for example, when I would take a couple of steps and 4 or 5 of them would fly a little bit on the left side of the trail, and at the same time 5 or 6 of them (or more) would fly on the right. It became very difficult to keep track of them all, for sure! Making sure I wasn't just pushing the whole group along, I would only take my initial count upon encountering said group. Once I "lost" them, I would subsequently encounter another group further down the trail. This went on all afternoon. And I needed a Hermit Thrush for LeSueur County, I guess I got one! :-) Also at the SP, I saw 5 sapsuckers, 2 Winter Wrens, both kinglets and a Barred Owl. At River Bend, I had 6 species of sparrow, a couple of sapsuckers, both kinglets, and a Great-horned Owl being heavily harassed by crows. Poor guy! In both counties there were lots of Red-breasted Mergansers, Pelicans, and over 30 Great Egrets scattered around Wells Lake in Rice. Good birding! Dave Bartkey Faribault, MN screechowl at charter.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080412/d8bca04e/attachment.html
