Hello Birders- My family and I did the 3rd Occasional Douglas County Big Day as part of the Hawk Ridge birdathon fundraiser on Saturday. We had a great run, starting with heavy rain early spotty rain in the mid-morning, and then a nice afternoon. The even was marked by an amazing lightning storm.
We hit 142 species, including the dreaded peep sp. (which I will mention in a sec...). Our high is 153, but given the conditions we feel great about 142. We had some great highlights, no mega-rarities, and of course some big misses. Highlights: Three Red-necked Phalaropes on the Osakis Sewage Ponds Wilson's Phalarope 18 Warblers, which is pretty good for Douglas County, we felt. We might have had more with more bush beating and some better weather. We had just run into a great active flock when the floodgates opened. In that flock was a female CERULEAN WARBLER. We've had this species a few times in Doug. Co, but not often. A number of PHILADELPHIA VIREOS were present too. Near Spruce Center we found at least two singing GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLERS. And near Kensington late in the day we found a CANADA WARBLER, I believe our first or second record for the county. A YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER was a highlight at the Osakis boat launch, which also provided our only RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. A great bird for Douglas Co, which my dad has seen a few times now, was a COMMON RAVEN near Lake Irene. These birds seem to be pushing south a little! Some birds did not seem to be back, inlcuding Alder Flycacher, E. Pewee (we had one, also at the boat launch so potentially a migrant), Indigo Bunting (tough miss!), Cuckoos (also annoying to miss). We did poorly on sparrows, missing all Zonos and Lincoln's and Grasshopper Sparrows. The former may have been gone already but the other two we should have had. Shorebirds were awful - aside from the locals (Killdeer, Snipe, Woodcock, Spotted Sandpiper) we found a SANDERLING (!) a Lesser yellowlegs, and the two PHALAROPES. We had a flock of peeps with both a large and small size in it, but despite having a mark on where they landed, never refound them, resulting in a single tally of peep sp. With a better year for shorebirds, and maybe a little less rain, we could have broken our record. If anyone has questions about specifics, please feel free to email. Finally, on Friday in Wright Co at 94 and CR 39, we had a Common Raven soaring over the freeway. Good birding, Jesse Ellis Madison, Dane Co. -- Jesse Ellis Post-doctoral Researcher Dept. of Zoology University of Wisconsin - Madison Madison, Dane Co, WI ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
