As Dave Cahlander reported, the Sprague’s Pipit was heard and seen again this morning.
The previously posted directions (“first fence north of the windmills, walk east along the fenceline to metal pipeline post”) are excellent, though, as Dave noted, when the bird was first heard it was farther from the road than the metal post is – perhaps 150 yards NE, or ENE, of the post. The pipit began singing at about 9:20, and sang from the air over and over again until about 10:50. All the while, the center of its song flight gradually shifted a short distance to the WNW. During this period, I’m not sure if the bird ever came down – though I can’t be sure, given that there were several one-or-two-minute periods when I couldn’t hear it. (I’m not sure if the bird had stopped singing, or if I simply failed to hear it with my increasingly poor hearing.) At 10:50 I watched the pipit abruptly drop to the ground. It landed roughly 150 yards N of the metal post, where it almost immediately interacted with another bird that was right about at its landing site. Alas, it didn’t stay, taking off after perhaps only 10 seconds – too quickly for me to switch from binoculars to telescope. 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
