I'll try to keep this message relatively short, and for the complete list of birds I saw today you can check Ebird or the MOU database. I saw a pair of Louisiana Waterthrush feeding together within about 30 feet at the northwest edge of Rapids Lake(temporarily part of the Minnesota River). The Henslow's Sparrow was on one of its normal territories in grassland west of Rapids Lake. There were many other recent arrivals following 2 very favorable days for migration including Baird's Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs(my 2nd bird of the year), Least Flycatcher, House Wren, Sedge Wren, Lincoln's Sparrow, Black-and-white Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Nashville Warbler, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak at Rapids Lake. Orange-crowned and Palm Warbler were also present today, but they were present yesterday as well. A Pine Warbler was present at Rapids Lake yesterday, but I did not find one today. Before yesterday the only warbler species I had seen this year was Yellow-rumped. Many more sparrow arrived to Rapids Lake this morning as well that were not there yesterday including my first large numbers of White-throated Sparrow for the spring. After nearly 4 hours at Rapids Lake, I made a shorter stop at Carver Park Reserve. It wasn't quite as active, but I did find Baird's Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, House Wren, Black-and-white Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, Palm Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, and Lincoln's Sparrow. There were Kinglets present this morning at both locations, but higher numbers were around last week. Leaf-out is about 3 weeks behind the early pace of 2016 and 2017, so viewing this spring should be very good.
John Cyrus ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
