I made a quick loop around the Prairie's Edge Wildlife Drive this morning from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Not a big variety of species, but LOTS of the ones I saw. On Big Bluestem there were 24 great egrets. They were kind of squawking and charging each other - I think the carrying capacity for that basin was at the limit. I'm amazed at the number of egrets at Sherburne this year, as we usually seem to get only a couple at the end of the summer. We know for sure there are at least 40 birds here, as we've counted that many roosting in one tree. I keep hoping for a shorter one with yellow feet, but no luck so far. There were two young gallinules on the north end of Big Bluestem Pool as well. At MM 3, there have been lots of teal and mallards feeding recently, with wood ducks, Canada geese and a few other species occasionally showing up. This morning there was one green-winged teal mixed in. There were lots of little brown birds flying around. I know a lot of them were chipping sparrows, but there were also vesper, song, grasshopper, clay-colored, a few dickcissels and my first white-throated for the fall (it was at mile 2.2). I saw in excess of 15 flickers, so they must be on the move as well. And lots of American goldfinches - good hatch, I think. There were only a few warblers in the woodland area today - American redstart, Nashville, black-and-white, chestnut-sided and Wilson's. There were red-eyed and yellow-throated vireos, and a couple of gray catbirds in the mix. On Stickney Pool, the last bit of water before the end of the drive, there's a mud/grass flat that had quite a few shorebirds on it this morning, including 22 Wilson's snipe! There were also killdeer, one semipalmated plover, two semipalmated sandpipers, a lesser yellowlegs and two solitary sandpipers, although they weren't associating with each other. Betsy Beneke Sherburne NWR
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