Again, from my perch atop an apartment building in Lakeside, I watched an impressive passerine flight this morning, although it was overwhelmingly dominated by a single species. Paul Dolan-Linne and Josh Bednar helped me count waxwings from sunrise until nearly 10:00 AM this morning, at which point the onslaught had predictably petered out. When the final counts were in, we had accumulated a surprising 3,291 Cedar Waxwings, the second-highest southbound flight on-record for the state (the largest, 3,882 on 17 Sep 1985 at Lakewood Pumping Station). Aside from waxwings, few other birds were moving in notable figures, although the morning did feature the best American Goldfinch flight of the fall so far. Only those identified flyovers, presumably migrating, are listed below:
Blue-winged Teal 3 Common Nighthawk 2 Ruby-throated Hummingbird 1 Belted Kingfisher 1 Eastern Kingbird 21 Blue Jay 60 Common Raven 1 Purple Martin 3 European Starling 3 Cedar Waxwing 3291 Northern Waterthrush 1 Rose-breasted Grosbeak 5 Bobolink 6 Red-winged Blackbird 4 Common Grackle 16 American Goldfinch 116 >From late morning to early afternoon, I hiked about four miles of beach and jetty real estate at Park Point, turning up the following shorebird figures. The highlight was certainly a single, obliging Buff-breasted Sandpiper (closer to Lafayette Park than Park Point). Semipalmated Plover 1 Spotted Sandpiper 6 Ruddy Turnstone 1 (juvenile) Sanderling 17 Semipalmated Sandpiper 4 Least Sandpiper 1 Baird's Sandpiper 15 (1 molting adult, the rest juveniles) BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER 1 (juvenile) This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org) Good Birding, Cameron Rutt Duluth, St. Louis County ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
