I'll start with the puzzle. The bird was in a grassy area/pasture within a 1/4 mile of water. It seemed to be about waterthrush size, had the whitish, striped sides & eye stripe of the waterthrush or oven bird but had a rusty cap like a palm warbler and distinctly yellow chin/throat area and under the rump (not quite as bright as the yellow warbler in those areas but close). Any ideas? I really can't seem to find any matches in my bird book. My closest guess is the "western" palm warbler but it seemed larger and the sides were more heavily striped. I don't remember if it bobbed it's tail or not. Any ideas? I may try to relocate it this weekend.
--- We found a nice bunch of warblers on Sunday in our area (our yard & a side-road somewhere along Dead Lake). Not too many species but a great many individuals - particularily the 1st two on the list. palm (not at all afraid of the car, we were afraid we'd run them over!) yellow-rumped yellow Wilson's redstarts ruby crowned kinglets also: solitary sandpiper (FOY: 1, of course) coots northern shovelers mallards wood ducks canada geese common tern Forster's tern ring-billed gulls red winged blackbirds (females here too) Brewer's blackbird (FOY) grackles starlings crows horned larks baltimore orioles northern waterthrush (2, FOY) barn swallows tree swallows loons cardinals blue jays (8! in our yard at once) mourning doves song sparrows chipping sparrows white-throated sparrows clay-colored sparrows Harris' sparrows (FOY - Tues. morning) house sparrows robins bluebirds ovenbird rose-breasted grosbeaks (FOY) goldfinches house finches purple finches chickadees yellow-shafted flicker downy woodpeckers hairy woodpeckers white-breasted nuthatches red-breasted nuthatch red tailed hawks turkey vultures kestrels Amy Drake Richville, MN (Ottertail county) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080513/5782aa4c/attachment-0001.html