I actually want to talk about three different things. First, I went to the boardwalk on Long Meadow Lake at Old Cedar Avenue for a little while around lunch time. I was surprised by the variety of waterfowl present: Mallards - many Canada Goose - many Northern Shoveler - Seen around 20 Northern Pintail - 2 American Wigeon - 3 Green-winged Teal - 8+ Bufflehead - 1 Ring-necked Duck - 70+ American Coot - 1000+
I was hoping to see a little bit of variety, but this was more than I expected. I also saw Swamp Sparrows and Song Sparrows on the way to the boardwalk. I also noticed some discussion about eBird. I just wanted to add that I personally love using eBird. I enter all of my data into eBird and also use it to find data/trends/etc both statewide and nationally. It is a good tool to use if you are looking for specific birds, especially if you are looking for new or unusual birds. It is also useful for finding places to bird, especially if you are going on vacation somewhere, because you can look and see some birding "hotspots" anywhere that people are using eBird. In relation to the use of eBird, I decided to look for sightings of Common/Hoary Redpolls this fall in North America after seeing Al Schirmacher's report about possibly hearing a Redpoll. It seems starting a week ago there have been 7 reports of Common Redpolls all in Canada near the border (5 being on the north side of Lake Superior) and one report of a Hoary Redpoll between Winnipeg and Minnesota. So I don't think it would be impossible for Redpolls to be punching into Minnesota, if they were on the north side of Lake Superior as of a week ago. Ben Harste Bloomington, MN ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
