This morning I ran into Skyler Vold, a young birder from Lamberton at the Sleepy Eye WTP's. While we were scanning the ponds, we found a Black-necked Stilt along the shoreline in the northwest corner of the north pond. It was loosely associating with some other shorebirds. We noticed that it had some sort of injury to it's right leg as it seemed to favor it when it walked. We left about an hour after first seeing it and it was still in the same general area, foraging along the rip-rap in that corner of the pond. There were several hundred shorebirds (maybe more) at the ponds today, most are concentrated up near the front entrance. Water levels fortunately are low right now so many shorebirds are along the exposed gravel bars on both ponds by the entrance. Also worth noting was a single Ruddy Turnstone and 3 Hudsonian Godwits. I believe that this is the second record for Black-necked Stilt in Brown County. The first was in May, 2010 of two birds near the town of Essig.
Brian Smith Sleepy Eye ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
