On Thursday morning while walking the ravine in Central Park (Ortonville) I got a good look through binoculars of an Olive-Sided Flycatcher. Later in the afternoon, it made an appearance in my yard but I haven't seen it since.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I noticed a large, mostly grayish, big-billed sparrow thrashing around in the leaf litter of the ravine. After 2 confounding days of waiting for a long, decent look at it, it was a dead-ringer for the thick-billed, California type of Fox Sparrow. Yesterday while talking to Fred Eckhardt of Boyd, MN, he mentioned that the same variant had been scratching around his feeders last week. That's a new one for both of us. Also of note, Snipes are winnowing in Big Stone County WMAs as of Wednesday evening, though I haven't seen any plovers or sandpipers in the flooded fields yet. They seem to have held south of the Minnesota River this week, but I'd expect them to start showing up in Big Stone/LqP today or tomorrow. Water levels at Salt Lake are about as high as they get; hundreds of Gadwalls and Ruddy Ducks were present yesterday, along with decent rafts of Canvasback and Scaup. I found a pair of Trumpeter Swans in a flooded field between Nassau and Bellingham, and in the same area, drove past a Red-Tailed Hawk feeding on a Coot while standing in a few inches of water (another first). -- Jason M. Frank Ortonville Public Library Founder & Vice President Luddite Ornithologists League (LOL) Big Stone County, Minnesota ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
