On Saturday Jim Palmer and I undertook a spontaneous, casual, and—for a Big Day—poorly executed Rice County Big Day. I describe that way because we didn’t decide to try it until we started out that morning, we didn’t plan our route or stops ahead of time, we didn’t start until 6:30 a.m., we took sit-down breaks for lunch and supper, and we spent an hour and a half trekking through Koester Prairie (one of my favorite spots) and two and a half hours in Cannon River Wilderness—West Unit, neither of which warranted that much time on a Big Day. Nevertheless, we logged 125 species, including 22 species of warbler, 13 species of waterfowl, and 8 species of sparrow (probably 9, but in the wind we weren’t sure if we were hearing a Grasshopper Sparrow or not). Misses that we should have gotten were Brown Thrasher, Eastern Towhee, White-crowned Sparrow, and any raptors other than Bald Eagle and Red-tailed Hawk. The Rice County Big Day record is 143, so we were happy with our 125.
Gerry Hoekstra Northfield ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
