From about 8:00 until noon this morning, a total of 2,070 Dark-eyed Juncos were counted along the North Shore of L Superior in St Louis Co. These were counted by tens as they foraged along roadsides on a route starting where Scenic Hwy 61 turns off U S Hwy 61 just beyond the Lester R, and ending at the Lake Co line just SW of Knife River. Aside from a few detours, this route basically followed Superior St / Old North Shore Rd parallel to the lakeshore, and it covered about 14 miles total. All of the juncos were along roads with relatively little traffic, so that the flocks were not flushed away from the roads very often and mostly stayed in view to be counted. None of the birds seemed to be actively migrating at the time, since none were seen flying SW along the lakeshore.
This count of 2,070 juncos represents an average of nearly 150 individuals per mile and was definitely on the low/conservative side. Although the flocks may have included a handful of sparrows (e.g., a few American Trees, White-throateds, and White-crowneds), these sparrow numbers were negligible. Also seen this morning were good numbers of birds migrating down the North Shore, including Blue Jays, Am Crows, E Bluebirds, Am Robins, Lapland Longspurs, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Rusty Blackbirds, and others, so it will be interesting to see what the totals are from today's non-raptor count by Karl Bardon and others. Kim R Eckert [email protected] http://www.mbwbirds.com ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
