Paul Egland, Esther Gesick and I spent a frustrating day looking for Red Crossbills in various parts of Renville, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle and Big Stone counties. We finally located three Red Crossbills at the west Hanley Falls cemetery. We were unable to locate any other Red Crossbills after looking at over a dozen locations that had mature spruce trees with cones.
Note that there are two cemeteries located near Hanley Falls. We saw the Red Crossbills in the western cemetery that is located 1.5 miles west of Hanley Falls along County Road 18. The eastern cemetery is located at the intersection of County Road 18 and State Highway 23. Both cemeteries have plenty of mature spruce trees with cones and are worthwhile to be checked. Other birds of note: Among the many shorebirds at Salt Lake, we were able to identify both Hudsonian Godwits and Willets. Other shorebirds were too distant for identification. For migrant songbirds we found one Olive-sided Flycatcher in Lac Qui Parle county and two Northern Waterthrush along the auto tour drive of Big Stone NWR. There were also late lingering single Orchard Oriole and Lark Sparrow. Regards,,, William Marengo Chaska/Victoria/Waconia ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
