I pulled into the driveway this afternoon with my son, and when I parked he told me he thought he saw an Eagle flying over the house. This is not a rare event but I got out to look in order to document it for eBird. I nearly had the breath knocked out of me when I saw it was not an Eagle but was instead a low-flying dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, gliding over the house less than 100 feet up. I scrambled into the house to fetch the camera and managed to get one shot while he circled before disappearing to the east and north.
Yesterday I saw a light-morph Rough-legged Hawk just 20 feet on the Stearns side of the county line on Hwy. 23 just west of Paynesville. It was perched on a road sign. Waterfowl are starting to drop in at Foot Lake in Willmar and are changing daily. Between today and yesterday I've seen: Mallards - 3 American Wigeon - pair Gadwall - 6 Northern Shoveler - pair Common Merganser - 7 Scaup - 5 Canada Geese (40-50) Cackling Geese (3) Josh Wallestad ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
