Thanks to a tip from Mike Furtman and Terry Wiens, I spent several hours counting grebes along the North Shore between Lakewood Pumping Station and the French River this afternoon (1 May). Horned and Red-necked Grebes normally congregate along Park Point in late April / early May but Lake Superior is still frozen along Park Point and along the North Shore as far east as Lakewood Road. Thousands of grebes are currently staging along the edge of the pack ice. I counted a total of 2,588 Horned Grebes and no fewer than *3,955* Red-necked Grebes! The latter is nearly twice the previous high count of 2,094 Red-necked Grebes at Park Point 26 April 2013.
Hundreds more birds were too far away to identify and/or count using my Leica Televid 77mm APO scope with 20-60x eyepiece despite good viewing conditions under overcast skies and relatively calm waters in the late afternoon. The vast majority of these unidentified birds were probably also Red-necked Grebes -- I saw one Long-tailed Duck and two White-winged Scoters, but very few ducks of any kind amongst the huge rafts of grebes. -- Peder H. Svingen Duluth, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
