It's spring! It's spring!!! The snow is gone from the back yard and about half the lake is open water. The yard is snow free, but there have been few transient birds around. The crocuses are in bloom and Siberian squill are just beginning to flower in the front yard. Everything is still brown, except for the evergreen vinca and the mosses, which are in flower or whatever a non-flowering plant does. A few of the native forbs are beginning to peek out.
It has been an awesome week of birding! Last Saturday I went with a group from the Hastings Bird Festival down to Lake Byllesby on the border of Goodhue and Dakota counties and found a riot of waterfowl, counting some 30 species with awesome looks at a Cinnamon Teal and horned and red-necked grebes, plus 5 species of shorebirds. There were also dancing Sandhill Cranes, terns, and bonnie gulls, and passarines including Fox and Song Sparrows, Bluebirds, Phoebe, shrike, sapsucker, and Yellow-rumps. Hawks included Harrier and both accipiters. And, fields of Tundra Swans. Monday got better, when 2 Whooping Cranes were seen flying into the 180th Street marsh. They were later ID'd as two males from the Wisconsin or "eastern" flock. Following guidelines from the Fish and Wildlife Service they were not posted on social media. Sorry. If it is any consolation, they were on the far shore and I got lousy photos. I stayed until nightfall listening to chorus frogs playing their combs, Yellowlegs in flight, Pied-bills, Soras, Mallards, Blue-winged Teal calling, coyotes singing, and several night sounds I couldn't quite ID. Tuesday morning yielded a probable new yard bird as I could hear Sandhill Cranes calling from the athletic fields a couple of blocks away. By late in the day, reports were that the Whoopers had left. Tomorrow we head to western Minnesota for this weekend's Salt Lake Birding Weekend. Come one, come all. It's free and there is no registration. Check out http://moumn.org/saltlake/ 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
