A not-so-birdy morning got really interesting for me when a brilliant prothonotary warbler popped out of the yellow leaves in front of me. On the trail west from the Old Cedar parking lot, towards Lyndale, middle of the second boardwalk. It was feeding in leaves near the edge of the boardwalk, flew across a couple of times, as it moved along, about 8 feet ahead of me. I think I saw every inch of the bird as I watched it for nearly 20 minutes making mental notes of all the field marks so I could check my i.d. back at the car: big dark bill, black eye, spectacular golden-yellow head, throat, and belly, green back, white undertail, solid blue-gray wings, etc.
Shorebirds were east of the Highway 77 bridge, Long Meadow Lake across the trail from the first pond. Good mud-flats; as the lake is low. One appeared to be a yellow-legs, the others were not, looked ploverish, but I didn't have my scope so am not sure. Also saw: robins, golden crowned kinglets. And a coyote that crossed the trail 20 feet from me. Ruth Hiland --- Get FREE High Speed Internet from USFamily.Net! -- http://www.usfamily.net/mkt-freepromo.html --- ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
