I ran the Appleton BBS route on a near-perfect weather day on 6/25/08 with light winds. This route starts about 12 miles south of Benson, runs due west with one jog to a point a couple of miles east of Appleton, then due north to an ending on the Pomme de Terre River bridge north of U.S. 12. It's a very pleasant route with some good CRP land and wet meadows and small river and stream bridges and a few miles of black earth corn/soybean desert. I thought it would be interesting to see what has changed over the years as this route was first run in 1978 and 24 times since then. I was quite surprised to end up with 75 species, exceeding the past high total by 6 species. A rough spring of extreme weather would not seem to be the year to set this mark. The total number of birds of 1186 was a 5th overall high count, also a bit of a surprise. Highlites of the count included the first Bald Eagle ever recorded, 3 Northern Harriers (highest ever), 77 pheasants (highest ever by one), one Wilson's Snipe (2nd count record), 2 Black-billed Cuckoos, 4 Black Tern, 4 species of woodpecker including sapsucker and Pileated. 2 Western Kingbirds, 3 Willow Flycatchers (tied all time high), 8 Baltimore Orioles, and 2 Orchard Orioles. Low counts were noted for Yellow Warbler (3), Eastern Bluebird (0), Eastern Kingbird (2), Yellow-shafted Flicker (0), and Dickcissel (0). Species above the long-term average (23 year data set) included Killdeer, Ring-billed Gull, Red-tailed Hawk, Great Crested Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, American Crow, House Wren, Clay-colored Sparrow, Song Sparrow, and American Goldfinch. Species below the long-term average included Gray Partridge, Mourning Dove, Red-headed Woodpecker (average 5, 3 in 2008), Horned Lark (average 35, 23 in 2008), Barn Swallow (average 32, 25 in 2008--old barns are disappearing on the landscape!), Vesper Sparrow (average 33, 28 in 2008), Savannah Sparrow (average 10, 6 in 2008), Western Meadowlark (average 33, 9 in 2008--lowest count ever, clearly this species is in trouble even in the heart of its MN range), Yellow-headed Blackbird (average 26, 12 in 2008, maybe spread out more this year with all the ponded marshes or maybe a real decline?). Cliff and Bank Swallows are doing well on this route although the U.S. Hwy 12 bridge site for Cliff Swallows was abandoned but the bridge upstream had a healthy 120 birds. Bob Russell, USFWS, Ft. Snelling, MN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080701/6631e1b6/attachment.html
