I birded four locations with a total of 56 species. A lot of what others have been reporting were seen. Highlights:
General Mills Nature Area (Golden Valley): -Northern Shrike (one singing) General Mills Nature Preserve (Golden Valley): -Peregrine Falcon--As I was leaving, I spotted it in hunting mode. It eventually went behind the Spanlink Building (west of 169). I am wondering if this is the same individual at Colonade Building, although this would be about 4-5 miles away from its original home. Do Peregrines have multiple building sites, or was this a possible migrant or even a new Peregrine to add to Hennepin County? I have never seen one in this part of Golden Valley. Any input would be appreciated. Purgatory Creek (Eden Prairie): -15 waterfowl(like) species, including 15 Common Loons along the southeast side of the "creek" -Herring Gull (at least one, adult) Westwood Hills Nature Center (St. Louis Park): -There is a male Downy Woodpecker that has a buffy-orange breast. A naturalist told me that they have seen it there since February. Could this be a Pacific subspecies, or just an aberrant plumage? Has this been documented in Minnesota? A lot of the water was iced over in many places, and there were some ice on the trails as well. Even Killdeer and a Yellow-rumped Warbler were having fun ice-skating. It has turned into a sunny day, nonetheless. Good birding! Alyssa DeRubeis tiger150 at comcast.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080413/77a3a68e/attachment.html
