Spring has sprung! Saturday I walked down to the Mississippi River from the Youth Camp at the west piece of Spring Lake Park. I found 12 different species of waterfowl. I probably could have found more, if I wasn't surrounded by crowd of rambunctious young scouts, who really weren't that interested in the distant ducks. They included three Snow Geese, noticed by one of the scouts and a flock of some 50 White Fronted Geese flying by. The scouts were the most impressed by the Turkey tracks and a Red Squirrel sitting motionless in a tree.
On the way home I spotted a dark morph Rough-legged Hawk. Despite the total lack of any open water on Quiggley Lake, at least two pairs of our nesting Canada Geese arrived today. Today (Sunday) I headed to the southern part of Dakota County. Blackbirds were singing on territory and flying in large noisy flocks. Primarily they were male Red-winged Blackbirds. I saw several single and a flock of 30+ C. Grackles. Most of the flocks included small numbers of male Cowbirds. A few female (or first year male) Red-winged Blackbirds and Cowbirds were in some of the flocks. I found a group of six Rusty Blackbirds in the water in the small pond west of the beach at Lake Byllesby. Many hundreds of Robins were feeding on ground around the campground at near the beach. Also there were a Cedar Waxwing and at least a couple of singing Juncos and House Finches. I also found a first of the year Killdeer on the shore of a mostly frozen pond and a flock of Eastern Bluebirds near some bluebird boxes. 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
