HI My friend Travis and I went over some of the same areas that i covered a few days ago. We started at the 180th street marsh where we got Horned Larks,Greater white fronted geese, Tundra Swans, canvasback, at least three, redheads, scaup, gadwall, Canada Geese and northern Shovelers. We needed our scopes for most of it. We ran into several people that we knew including Gary Swanson who has hikes on Tuesdays. We left shortly after Gary left and he called me to tell me that he saw a eurasian Collared Dove in Vermillion. Well I had never seen on and Travis had never seen on in this state so we drove to Vermillion and saw two of them in a front yard on the west side of Vermillion. Next we headed for the Industrial Park near Randolph we saw four , possibly five eastern meadowlarks we got nice photos and a video of them, we saw half a dozen killdeer there also a red tailed hawk, half a dozen sandhill cranes flew over head and more horned larks. On to lake Byllesby where we saw many green winged teals but little else besides a couple of eagles. From here we heard that a Eastern Screech owl had been seen in Mpls and we headed over to where it had been seen and found a dozen photographers getting there shots. We got ours too then went over to Roberts Bird sanctuary where we saw a handful of turkeys and a couple who told us that there were red breasted mergansers in the middle of the lake. At first we weren’t sure that this was true then we saw them. One was on a floating dock taking rest and three others kept us busy photographing them for the better part of an hour. All in all was a great day in march for both of us. Below is a link for some photos. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/with/25821342926/ <https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/with/25821342926/> Ron Taube Coon Rapids
