....Ta Da!...juvenile Red Knot. OK, most responses I received correctly ID'd it as a Red Knot. Several as a juvenile. But, as expected several were just plain stumped. In Minnesota, this is a bird and an age/plumage we just don't often get to see away from Lake Superior. I've birded for some 40 years and I don't recall ever seeing a juvenile Red Knot other than at Park Point, Duluth. I've seen many in winter/basic plumage especially along the Florida coast. When first spotted I was impressed by how yellow the legs appeared and how the bill drooped a bit like a Least or a Stilt Sandpiper. This was not an expected species on the Oregon coast where they are very uncommon. We viewed the bird from a vehicle with binoculars and could not appreciate the impeccable juvenile mantle and scapulars pattern until we viewed the photos taken by long-time Oregon birder, Owen Schmidt, using a 600 mm telephoto.
Anyway, just trying to break up the shorebird doldrums that have settled into the metro area for now. Jim ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
