Finally stopped and birded the large pond on the north side of the huge wind generator in Maple Grove off Elm Creek Boulevard and Hemlock/ Zachary Lane. FIrst surprise was a Green Heron sitting on a bare little islet (teensie island) on the east side. Did not expect to see a Green Heron acting like a shore bird except it was obviously looking into the water for fish from the shore. It finally flew to the pond shore but then walked along the shore like a shore bird again but still keeping full attention to the water.
Second surprise was what I think were three Caspian Terns on another little islet near the pinch in the pond. I could be totally wrong since terns are also not my specialty (do I have a specialty? Never thought that thought before!). The were gull size or maybe just a bit smaller - easy to compare with so many gulls (sp? not my specialty either) nearby and the bills appeared all orangy-red. The tail seemed shorter than the wings. When they flew the wings were mostly all white with light grayish tinge to the ends. (Now is that any way for a non-technical bird dude to talk - of course it is!) The final surprise was with the constant warning cries of the Killdeers - three of them - one a bit a away but two obviously concerned about the same area. As I began to weave to see if they would react more in any particular area more than another - and keeping my eyes locked to the ground in case a few eggs lay bare on the ground - the bird's behavior seemed very odd in that they weren't doing the wounded bird routine but running away, stopping and looking and then circling back all on the ground. My suspicions that something was up was confirmed when a "cruising" of killdeer chicks (had to make up some name for a flock of baby killdeers) shot out of some thick grass I was approaching. There were about 6-8 of them and they just disappeared into the thick grass and then shot out the other side and again disappeared into the next tuft thicket of grass. I looked up "cute" in the dictionary when I got home and sure enough there was a picture of them. Thomas Maiello Angel Environmental Management, Inc. Maple Grove, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080603/90d52853/attachment.html
