I participated in the Red Wing CBC today, birding around Wacouta south of Red Wing. Our area was reduced by the time it took to try to get a handle on the thousands of Common Mergansers both on the water and in the air. We counted and estimated over fifteen thousand, but were clearly unprepared and overwhelmed by about ten minutes of continuous and overlapping waves of Mergansers flying past. We counted thousands of birds and then compared flock sizes and multiplied, but the numbers were still staggering. Joe Conley took a great picture of one small part of the flock.
Good birds we found included a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (one of two seen that day) and an immature Great Black-backed Gull that stood out easily even at a distance by its size, which appeared to closer to the many Bald Eagles than the Herring Gulls. Interesting was the find of a flock of Pine Siskins at exactly the same spot as last years CBC. Steve Weston on Quiggley Lake in Eagan, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
