A half-hour search for the little blue heron in the hour before sunset was not successful. Even if it were still feeding at that late hour, there were many grassy areas along the shore that could have concealed it, so this is not to conclude that it was not present. (Two fellow birders, one with scope, were also unsuccessful.) It should be noted that the bird's reported locations were thoroughly backlit by a bright sunset, which was a bit daunting in itself, but if the bird has frequented the area throughout summer as reported, it's worth trying again earlier in the day. There were a couple of compensations: a nice osprey fly-over, and an extremely close encounter with a Pileated woodpecker, who was not at all bashful, and even did some ground feeding about 30 feet away.
Linda 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
