Today I was in Lac qui Parle County, and saw lots of Plegadis ibises. Specifically, at drawn-down Cory Lake in the Hamlin WMA, there were 50(!) ibises. Thirty of these I saw well enough to identify as White-faceds, i.e., I could see red irises, reddish facial skin, and, in almost all cases, a band of whitish feathering surrounding the bare facial skin. For 17 more I couldn't quite clinch the identification - I could see reddish facial skin and, usually, the aforementioned band of whitish feathering, but couldn't be confident about the color of the eyes. And for the last three ibises, one was seen reasonably well but appeared to have the anomalous combination of dark irises and purple-pink facial skin, whereas, for the last two, I didn't see anything more than dark plumage.
I also saw one White-faced Ibis in Walter Twp. (on the east side of CR 7 about 0.3 miles south of CR 38) and two more in Yellow Bank Twp. (SE of the intersection of 366th St. and 141st Ave.). By the way, Cory Lake is fantastic, as advertised, with over 2500 shorebirds of 13 species and over 1300 ducks of seven species. Phil Chu Department of Biology St. John's University Collegeville, MN 56321 ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
