We got down to Bass Ponds/Old Cedar for our exercise/birding. Hiking down the Bass Ponds ravine, we heard a flock of tundras overhead, but they were gone before we could pick them out, and were quickly out-done by the drone of aircraft! We did find our FOY E. phoebe at the bottom, and another later, next to the parking area at the top of the hill. Far to the NE there were several large white birds on an ice shelf. There was lots of heat-wave interference, but I think they were snow geese--too large for Ross', not the right profile for pelicans. They were mostly immobile, except for one that was preening and flashed a bit of black.
We ran into a fellow birder who'd seen pb grebe further west, but we never found them--just hoodies, shovelers, bufflehead, coots, mallards, and Canadas. However, one Canada was closely accompanied by what was certainly a cackler---VERY much smaller. That was a gratifying, comparative look. There was also lots of action among a half dozen downies: drumming, agitated vocalizations, and chases; must be the breeding thing. At Old Cedar, there were pine siskins calling around the parking lot, and we heard redpolls just to the west of the causeway area. While trying, without success, to see the latter, we heard kinglets call. We saw tiny bodies making fluttering movements, but the backlighting prevented seeing which kinglet it was. There were a couple of RTHAs, and eagles were present, both on the ice with the gulls and in the air. The pond beside the causeway held several shovelers, even closer than we'd seen them at Wells Lake; one of them had the classic look of a dark green head, but the rest of them sported head feathers that were violet-blue in the afternoon light. They were stunning! Linda & Rob Whyte ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
