Bill Brown and I went out for a couple of hours this chilly morning (15 degrees F, 0 F windchill). We were afraid that Vadnais Lake would be frozen over, but there is still a lot of open water. Walking from County Road F into area between the lakes we had a great look at a pileated woodpecker flying and stopping several times in close trees in front of us.
Then a northern shrike flew over our heads and lit in a tree giving a great look. A little further, at the end of the line of cedars, the Townsend's solitaire flew into a bare tree 20 feet above us and just sat there looking at us. After 10 minutes the solitaire flew down to the lake edge to drink and then hopped up into a bush 10 feet from us and just sat there singing softly for 15 more minutes until we left. We spent some time admiring the many ring-necked ducks, mallards, American coots, common mergansers, hooded mergansers, common goldeneyes, canvasbacks, 2 redheads, 1 ruddy duck, 10 trumpeter swans. As we were discussing the numerous trumpeter swans (I believe that most spend the winter here in the open water connecting the chain of lakes.), 5 tundra swans flew overhead calling. Also, 6 bald eagles were flying around the lake. Finally, as were walking back to the car, a sharp-shinned hawk flew from tree to tree 100 feet in front of us. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
