Our family went birding yesterday for a little bit in Shakopee and I went again for a short time today to the Blue Lake/Sewage Ponds and the Mill Pond in Shakopee.
Mill Pond in Shakopee: Mallards Trumpeter Swans (5 on the second and 4 today. There was also one other swan yesterday by itself on the ice of the large lake, I could not tell whether it was Trumpeter or Tundra.) Bufflehead (One seen on both days) Canada Goose (One seen on both days) American Black Duck (I'm pretty sure what I saw was a Black Duck on both days in the large pond. It is very dark and has a 'clean' looking bill that is yellow and slightly paler than male Mallards.) Blue Lake Sewage Ponds (everything on January 2): Trumpeter Swans (8) Belted Kingfisher (he was present briefly over the lake and flew off as we approached) Common Goldeneyes (a few on the lake and many in the sewage pond) Mallards Ring-Necked Duck (at least 5 on the sewage pond) Hooded Merganser (1 sitting on a pipe on the left side of the pond.) American Coot (counted 8 of them swimming about the pond) Canvasback (3, on the right side of the pond) Also, in reference to Al Schirmacher's post about winter declines of species this year. Have other places had larger amounts of snow than normal like the Twin Cities has had. If that is the case, is it possible this would be the cause of some of the decline in bird species here in Minnesota? I know that we stopped getting a lot of birds once the regular snowfalls came. I haven't seen Juncoes in our yard in a couple of weeks, and our late Chipping Sparrow was last seen on December 1 in our platform feeder, a few days before one of our snowstorms. Ben Harste ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
