This morning at 10 am, there were still at least 100 longspurs at the exact same location reported by Matt Dufort yesterday. Thank you, Matt!
It was rainy and the longspurs kept flying around, so we only got good looks at 4 - 5, which were clearly Lapland. We did not find the chestnut-collared, but since we hadn't seen laplands in a long time, that was a pretty good treat right there. To top it off, there were a number of horned larks and meadowlarks, and together with the laplands, their songs made quite a beautiful chorus. We stopped back around 11:30 and could not refind the longspurs, but the other larks were still there. John Zakelj Subject: Chestnut-collared Longspur in Dakota Co. From: Matt Dufort <[email protected]> Reply-To: Matt Dufort <[email protected]> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:32:48 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain I spent the day birding from the twin cities area down to Lake Byllesby. Not surprisingly, there were lots of other birders out and about. The big highlight of the day was a Chestnut-collared Longspur, observed around 12:30 among a large flock (500+) of Lapland Longspurs at the Randolph industrial site in Dakota County. This site is just off MN Hwy 56 (Randolph Blvd) north of Randolph. From Hwy 56, turn west onto 284th St E. It's essentially a small network of roads that don't connect to anything, but run through some really nice grassland habitat. The longspur flock was moving around a lot, frequenting fields on the north and south sides of the road west of the first stop sign. The vegetation south of the road makes it impossible to see them when they're on the ground; the field north of the road is bare stubble, and they spent a lot of time feeding in it. The majority of the flock departed to the north around 1:00, but is probably still in the general area. At the time the Chestnut-collared appeared, I was with Steve Weston and another birder. The Chestnut-collared was seen only in flight - it made several passes by us, giving a unique flight call. I was able to follow it for 30-45 seconds and see the extensive black on the breast and sides contrasting with the pale face, as well as the white wedges in the tail, which were much more extensive and differently-shaped than the Laplands. Unfortunately we weren't ever able to find it on the ground to get longer looks. We also spent a long time looking for Smith's Longspurs in the flock, without success. ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
