A week ago on Friday evening I visited 180th Street marsh in the evening before sunset and heard in the SW corner of the marsh a monotone cooing that I decided was a Black-billed Cuckoo. It was calling from the cattail edge of the marsh which was backed by a fringe of willow thicket no more than a five feet high. Habitat did not seem right, marginal at best for a cuckoo. I checked my recordings (Sibley on my phone) for a Least Bittern. The song definitely did not match the Bittern. I returned on Sunday morning and heard Marsh Wrens and a Spotted Sandpipers from two locations and then briefly the cuckoo. This time I had a corroborating witness, who decisively concurred with my analysis that this was a cuckoo and not bittern. This morning I finally got around to pulling up the Macaulay Library of sounds (from Cornell on the web). After listening to more than 20 recordings of Black-billed Cuckoos and about 10 or Least Bitterns, I finally had a match: Least Bittern. Also at 180th Street, I found a female Ruddy Duck, Black Tern, and a pair of Red-tailed Hawks, one of which was observed carrying food into the trees.
On that Friday evening, after finishing setting traps for macroinvertebrates at 180th St, I headed down to Frontenac to run my frog and toad survey. It was a gorgeous night. At the stop by the bridge by Villa Maria, I looked over the fields where the dense twinkling of fireflies reminded me of looking down at sparkling cities from a jetliner. The lights along the ground seemed to reflect the brilliance of milky way in the moonless clear sparkling above. As loud as might be expected from a busy city, the chorus of amphibians challenged my ability to separate the five other species from the overpowering audio competition of the Grey Treefrogs. In the hills above I was able to coax a Whip-poor-will to song. Luckily, there were no sleeping residents nearby to curse my disruption of the quiet up there. This last week I have been seeing baby birds everywhere. I plan on getting out on our lake to look at the baby ducks and will report on them at another time. Yesterday I watched as a Grackle scored what appeared to be a robin's blue egg and fly off with it probably towards its nest. Down at the local busy Tire's Plus two fluff-ball Killdeer were running the parking lot. In Fridley I found an adult and juvenile crow atop a light pole. The bright sun light highlighting their difference: the adult in shiny black, the juvenile in dull brownish-black. In Plymouth I stopped to leave a package on the bench by the front door and noticed the stain of bird poop on the concrete. I looked up and out of the small nest by the door erupted six Barn Swallows. It reminded me of the clowns bursting out of the little car in the circus. The last one's foot got tangled in the nest and it flopped in panic as I walked over and lifted it free. If I had been a disinterested deliveryman, they probably would have not felt compelled to flee the nest. On the other hand, if I had not been there, the one may have never made it out. Steve Weston On Quigley Lake in Eagan, 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
