It took 30 minutes of waiting at Assumption Lake, but 2 adult Red-necked Grebes with a closely trailing chick finally appeared from behind the reeds. Its a tough place to view especially the later it gets into summer. The chick is about 1/3-2/5 the size of the adult(not sure how old this makes him). There was also a Least Bittern at the lake. Anything else was too far for me to make out or obscured by blowing reeds.
Fledged young seen over the past week(mainly at Rapids Lake but a couple elsewhere): Eastern Wood-Peewee, Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Kingbird, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Yellow Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Lark Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, Cardinal, Indigo Bunting, Bobolink, Baltimore Oriole, and Goldfinch. For those of you that normally check out Chaska Lake for shorebirds this time of year, there is no habitat this year. The wildlife service did not drain the lake this summer and it is quite high. With the higher water, the reeds have grown so high that you can hardly see the lake from the trail(where the water nearly reaches now). This year the wildlife service decided to drain Rapids Lake instead of Chaska Lake. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning. This last weekend Rapids Lake was shallow but not really shallow enough. The Egrets and Herons were enjoying it though. A few areas that were shallow enough were already overgrown. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Store, access, and share your photos. See how. http://windowslive.com/Online/SkyDrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_CS_SD_photos_072009 ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
